Holy Knit!

Husband Sweater Update

2012-01-25T02:19:00.000-05:00

I have made some pretty good progress on Husband's sweater lately. Conference knitting. Windowless room in a Tampa hotel for a week. Attached sleeves to body.

Husband tried on the sweater when I was visiting him last weekend. It's tight, but it does fit properly. And he says to keep going. At this point, I figure I'll just wear the darn thing if he decides it's no good on him when it's done. And now he can never say I haven't made him a sweater. Whether he wears it or not is up to him.

Sheepie is for scale. Also for the fun of it.

Gratification

2012-01-22T15:57:00.001-05:00

Christmas and the first few weeks of January have taken a lot out of me. I've already had two trips down to Connecticut and one to Florida -- and a good bit of travel knitting to show for it. But that's for another post.

First I want to give you all a bit of gratification: I know you've been on the edge of your seats to find out what the sneak peek project was. It's SOCKS! Specifically, it's By the Fjords (Rav link), from Stephanie Van Der Linden's Around the World in Knitted Socks.

StrungUp and I were in Nido about a month before Christmas, and she picked up the book (she's a sucker for sock patterns; you know how *I* feel about knitting socks -- or, used to feel) and started leafing through it. I looked over her shoulder and... well, we both oohed and ahhed for a good half-hour. Almost every pattern in the book is something one or both of us want to knit. We especially remarked about By the Fjords, and I came back a couple of days later and bought two copies of the book: one for StrungUp, one for me. And then I bought the yarn.

The brown is Claudia Handpaints. Knowing that StrungUp's frustration with Claudia is that it's 100% wool (no nylon, no longevity! Who makes a sock yarn that's going to make holey sock? Claudia, apparently). I held double with a 100% Rayon thread for the heel.

The red and the green stripe are both Happy Feet. I needed two skeins of the brown, and one skein of the red (and one of the green, technically, but it's such a negligible amount that I barely think it's worth counting).

I really liked knitting with both of these, and have already bought more brown Claudia and more Happy Feet so I can do more patterns from this amazing book. You hear that? I WANT TO KNIT MORE SOCKS. I think it had something to do with the stranded knitting.

Seriously, isn't this so cool? So gorgeous? It was a tricky pattern. I had to think. I may have had to fudge things. I may have had to get creative to make the awesome swirly toe work. And I loved every minute of it.

I'm totally knitting these for myself sometime, too. LOVE. I cannot wait to knit about 2/3 of the patterns in this book.

Merry Christmas, StrungUp! And everyone else!

Christmas Sneak Peek

2011-12-15T14:32:00.000-05:00

How silly of me to start updating my blog again just before Christmas! I really should have known better, because I've switched to that point where all my knitting is secret-knitting! It's awfully hard to write posts about the things I'm knitting when they're all secret. Still... I will post a sneak peek of the secret-knitting item that most excites me right now. Seriously, I'm enjoying this item so much that I might make it for myself sometime, too. And it's something I've previously not enjoyed knitting, so this is a surprise to me, too!

Someday, all shall be revealed. [insert Mr. Burns-like laughter here, Smithers.]

On Getting It Right

2011-12-10T14:50:00.000-05:00

Husband's sweater is officially on hold. Hopefully just for a little while. At Thanksgiving, I held what I had done up to one of his favorite store-bought sweaters and discovered that the sleeves I have made (which I have done FOUR TIMES already) are about 2 inches narrower than the sleeves of the sweater he likes. Meaning... he thinks they will probably be too tight, and he won't wear the sweater. No amount of explaining to Husband that he chose a tight skinny sweater pattern and the sleeves are supposed to be like that will convince him that this sweater is actually turning out the way it should. So more fitting is needed. I may have to do the sleeves over again. I may have to make him choose an entirely different pattern and start over completely. We'll see when he comes home for Christmas and tries on the sleeves I've knit so far.

Seriously, at this rate, I'm just going to go to J. Crew and buy him more damn sweaters. Sigh. Can this marriage be saved?*

Not just regarding the sweater, I've been doing a lot of thinking about mistakes lately. Specifically, about making mistakes when knitting. I am the kind of knitter who will rip out inches and inches and inches of knitting -- hours and hours of work -- if I realize I've made even a tiny mistake somewhere down the line. Some of my knitting friends give me a good-natured hard time for my insistence on perfection in knitting. I don't mind their teasing, of course. I have always believed the old adage that "a thing worth doing is worth doing well."

The Amish will purposefully knit a mistake into their sweaters (usually a twisted stitch in an underarm right next to a seam so no one can see it anyway, ahem) because only God can make a truly perfect thing. So they deliberately put a mistake in their work. The Persians do this with their rugs, too. Surely there are other groups that do this as well. And I guess I understand where they're coming from -- they consider it an act of reverence/deference to the Creator, in a way. A kind of humility, to acknowledge and accept our own place in the created order.

I appreciate the devotion intended behind this practice, but I also find it a bit presumptuous to assume in the first place that one's work would be perfect without deliberately adding a "mistake." And is it really a mistake if you put it there on purpose?

I generally assume, particularly with knitting, but also in life in general, that nothing I do will be perfect. Maybe I absorbed just enough Wesleyan theology at that Methodist seminary I attended -- I like the idea of "striving toward perfection," even though we know we will never get there on our own. God's grace both brings us closer to the perfection for which we strive and makes it okay that we never achieve said perfection. Still, the striving is ours. That's what we do. In knitting and in life. So I do the best I can. If there's something to do over -- particularly something as easy as fixing a knitting error -- I should do it. A thing worth doing is worth doing well. Perfect doesn't even enter into it. Meticulous, maybe. But never perfect.

*In case you were wondering, yes, I am turning in to my mother. She used to say this all the time. It's the title of a real-live column from one of those 70s homemaker magazines that used to pile up next to the couch. McCall's or Family Circle or something. They were "gruesome" stories of minor marriage disputes, and it was left to the reader to decide "Can this marriage be saved?" I think the desired implication was that yes, a marriage can always be saved. I'm not sure this is true in every case. In my case, however, the answer is yes. It was always yes in my mother's case, as well. My parents have been married for something like 45 years. I suspect they'll be fine.

Finally!

2011-12-07T14:49:00.001-05:00

I don't know how many hats I've made for Husband over the years. He is like the Goldilocks of hats, I swear. This one's too tight, that one's too loose. This "weave" (he means gauge, but doesn't know it) is too big, this "weave" is too small. This brim's too wide, this brim's not wide enough. This color's too light, this color's too dark... I swear, I cannot get it right. It's a hat. But something in me (pride, probably) refuses to let him just go buy a stinkin' hat already. I mean, come on. He's married to a knitter! I will resent any hat he brings into our house that I didn't knit for him. He's a good and patient and kind and understanding man, so he puts up with me and my peccadilloes. Thank God.

Anyway, it seems I have finally gotten it right. This most recent attempt was sparked by desperation: my own. I was at this conference in Boston, seaming up the baby sweater for Meowkat, and finished the seaming sooner than I expected. A whole day sooner, in fact. I was faced with sitting in a conference with no knitting for an entire day. NOT AN OPTION.

This is one of those times that I'm grateful I come from an Iowan family. We're really nice folks, we Iowans. We don't know how to be otherwise. My wonderful sister drove me to the Boston neighborhood where the conference was taking place, and on the walk from her parking space to the church where we were meeting, with only 2 minutes to spare, I popped into Newbury Yarns. They have just moved to a new space and didn't have their hours posted on the door yet -- I walked in and asked, and I was there a half-hour early. But Aldrich (sp?) let me browse anyway. And by "browse," I mean "ask her for yarn to make a hat." She pointed me toward some lovely dark-gray Karabella Aurora, I grabbed some size 6 needles, and said "You might not recognize me. I'm Anne's sister. She'll probably be in a bit later." And Aldrich practically jumped over her counter to give me a hug. "How is Anne? She is such a nice lady. Please give her my best. Are you ready to check out now? Just let me sign in..."

And that, my friends, is how I bought yarn a half-hour before the shop is open. Aldrich is, herself, a very nice person and probably would have rung me up anyway without name-dropping my sister, but I'm sure it didn't hurt.

Anyway, I slipped in to the conference only a few minutes late, sat down, and cast on 72 stitches, joined in the round. Knitted a 1x1 rib for longer enough that I was ready to poke my eyes out with the needles, then switched to stockinette. Got most of the hat done during the day, then went back to my sister's house and knit more after dinner, let myself be talked into staying the night and driving back to Vermont in the morning. In the morning, I let myself be talked into staying pretty much until lunch... and I finished the hat. (Six k2tog decreases, evenly spaced on the round -- first every-other-row for a few sets, then switched to every row for the remainder.) My sister grabbed a ball of fluorescent-hunter-orange from her stash and suggested I add a tassel on the top, so I did. It looks hilarious and wonderful.

Husband loves the hat. He thinks it's just right. Now if it would only get cold in New Haven so he can actually wear it! And then I can take a picture of him wearing it.

(Just kidding. I would not wish winter on anyone. Even someone I don't like. Because I'm nice.)

Progress!

2011-12-04T01:04:00.000-05:00

Due to a hilarious (well, maybe not "hilarious," but it's either that or "frustrating," so I'll take the former) series of events, both of our guest beds have been unusable for ... six months or so? Maybe only four. Whatever, long enough that I haven't been able to block anything sizeable for a very long time.

All that has changed now, and I've now got both guest beds functional again. Come visit! But probably not in the winter, as there's no heat in this room, and I want to rent out the one that has a radiator. But meanwhile, I can block things again!

This is the long-languishing lizard ridge. Soon, friends, I will be able to sew together those long strips and add the border (I'm just going to do a garter stitch border, not crochet the silly scalloppy one in the pattern) and then it will be done! This is a very exciting thing, you know. Warm is good, up here in Vermont. Particularly in guest bedrooms that don't have heat.

Action Shot

2011-11-30T12:58:00.001-05:00

This is KnittingQueen's baby. Out for a walk on a fine October day (okay, so I've been sitting on this photo for a while), wrapped in the blanket I knit for her. Is she adorable, or what?

More babies on the way!

2011-11-24T10:13:00.002-05:00

I'm at that stage in life where freakin' everyone I know is having a baby. Everyone. It's a baby-splosion up in here. Most recently, Meowkat has been the lucky mom-to-be. I offered to throw the Burlington-area knitters shower way back in the summer when I didn't know that this fall was going to be craaaaazy-busy, and we finally made it happen at the beginning of November.

The fall has been so busy, though, that I didn't quite have my gift for her finished for the shower. Eh, it happens. At some point, I just realized that I could either throw a baby shower or finish the baby sweater I was knitting her, but not both. So I threw the shower and gave her an unfinished sweater (which I immediately took back so I could finish it, of course). Well now it's done! I did the final seam at a conference in Boston the week after the shower. I think I was also knitting this sweater in Cleveland. And in New Haven, CT. So it's a well-traveled baby sweater, and there's not even a baby yet! He's due this week.

I figure as long as I got the sweater done before he's born, I'm still okay.

I'd been having a hankering to knit an aran sweater as fall came upon us and the pull toward cozy knits grew strong. I even went out and bought some beautiful and perfect yarn for just such a sweater. But seeing as how I'm still plugging away on Husband's monotonous stockinette sweater and it's taking me FOREVER (I've started the sleeves four times now! Argh!), and I've also got multiple almost-but-not-quite finished sweaters for myself, I just didn't feel right starting yet another sweater for myself yet. But given the baby-splosion...

I promptly went out and bought some gorgeous Malabrigo Rios (okay, okay, I was checking out The Knitting Studio's new location and gave in to temptation), and flipped through StrungUp's pattern library (mine doesn't have much baby stuff) until I found the Heirloom Aran Sweater (Rav link). Perfect! I cast on pretty much right away, and knit whenever I had a chance. It made for good travel-knitting on my Cleveland trip, but all my other trips this fall have been driving trips, so I didn't get as much done as I'd have liked.

A couple of nights before the shower, this is where I was, progress-wise:

The sleeves on this sweater are loooooong. Too long. But most baby sweater patterns have sleeves that are too short, so whatever. It just took a while to knit the sleeves. But it's a baby sweater, so that's totally relative.

Anyway, I plugged away and had the sleeves done for the shower, and finished the neckband during the shower itself. I got to the seams eventually and finished them during a conference-slash-visit with my sister in Boston.

And here's the finished product!

See, the sleeves were so long that I ended up folding up the cuffs. If I knit this sweater again, and I may very well some day, despite other Ravellers' complaints that it's a poorly-written pattern (I didn't think it was great, but it wasn't so bad I would bother to complain about it), I will shorten the sleeves about 3 inches.

Now I just have to find a time to get it to Meowkat, who's supposed to be having this baby...today. So, um. Yeah.

I cannot wait to see this on Baby Whatshisname someday. He'll be adorable! Congratulations, Meowkat and Meow-husband.

The obligatory Jared Flood-inspired artsy knitting photo. Although I'm not so sure my light is as nice as his.

Also, Happy Thanksgiving everyone! It's my favorite day of the year. I'm going to go hang out with the Most Awesome Nephew in the World now.

Catching up

2011-11-21T12:46:00.005-05:00

Wow, I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted on this blog! That seems to be the situation this fall: I seem to think it's late September. How in the world is Thanksgiving this week? I am so not ready. I just cannot wrap my brain around the fact that Advent starts Sunday. Rather than being in a calm centered place of waiting, I am constantly hurrying to catch up.

I've been traveling a ton this fall, but haven't gotten as much knitting done as I'd like. I do have a few things to share, though. I'm on my fourth iteration of sleeves for Husband's sweater. I made a sweater for a friends' baby who is due any minute. I.... okay, I haven't done much else. But I think about it a lot! The closing of Borders, while sad, was good for the expansion of my knitting book library. And therefore my dreams.

I'm going to stretch my posting as much as possible over the next few weeks, so here's a sneak peek of coming attractions.

Malabrigo Rios has changed my life. Seriously. Not as much as my iPhone, but it's still it's own kind of quiet revolution.

Side Note

2011-08-24T10:52:00.000-04:00

Remember how I bragged that Ty didn't mess with my knitting projects and I could sit with him asleep on my lap while knitting and he would ignore the yarn? That isn't true anymore.

He was particularly obsessed with the Emily Capelet. I had to take to hiding it. He couldn't even leave it alone while I was doing my Finished Object photo shoot. Sigh.

Now for Something Completely Different

2011-08-22T23:00:00.004-04:00

I had to frog the sleeves of Husband's sweater. They fit me, but not him, and that's not so useful. I was frustrated, so I took a break from the sweater.

I was visiting Nido a couple of weeks ago, and Fiona asked my opinion about a pattern she'd picked for a sample. The next day, she called me and said that the woman who was supposed to knit the sample had backed out -- would I be interested in knitting it? Sure!

The pattern is Ysolda Teague's Emily Capelet. The yarn is Tidal Yarns DKish weight. It's kind of a light DK. I got gauge with a size 7 needle. I really enjoyed knitting with this yarn -- an alpaca/wool blend, and still very lanolin-y, and just pleasant under the fingers. And I like that it's local and natural and all that good stuff, too. It's got good drape, and isn't saggy.

I don't love the pattern. If I had been knitting it for myself and not as a shop sample, I'd have made a number of modifications. First, I'd do stockinette instead of garter stitch. (The yarn lends itself well to garter, I guess, but aesthetically I prefer stockinette, and I think the yarn would do well.) Also, the instructions specifically say not to pick up the wraps at the end of the short rows, which bugs me to no end. It just seems wrong. Those are the two big ones. I wasn't thrilled with the way the pattern was written, but that's more technical than aesthetic. I just knitted it as fast as I could. And grumped a bunch along the way. I did fourteen repeats of the pattern, and bound off. It took me two weeks to knit the whole thing, and then I put the buttons on last night.

(It must be said that I could not have survived this pattern if it weren't for the handy row keeper-tracker thingy that my friend Aubrey made and gave to me. You can see it in the top photo, that colorful piece of ribbon. Someday she will have her Etsy store up and running, and you should all get one. It's a lifesaver when it comes to patterns where every row is different and there's a lot to keep track of. Thank you, Aubrey!)

Now I can take it to the shop. Fiona is going to block it for me -- normally I'd be happy to do it, but I'm going out of town for a week and would rather give her the unblocked FO than make her wait until I get back to block it and get it to her.

And now I am eager to get back to Husband's sweater. Whew! I guess, much as I didn't enjoy the knitting of it, the Emily Capelet was exactly the kind of project I needed to get me back to being excited about... sleeves!

Adventures in Blocking on the Road

2011-07-27T16:08:00.008-04:00

My friend LiturgyGeek had a baby. A daughter. BabyLG, we can call her. She was born a few months ago now, but I didn't rush to make her something because I knew I wanted to make a baby sweater for her -- and, well, she was born at Easter. She lives in Iowa and won't need a baby sweater until the fall. A six-month size sweater will be perfect for her. And I knew I would see her Mama in July. Sooooo I didn't rush to get anything done and in the mail.

Anyway, July is here. Seeing LiturgyGeek (and meeting BabyLG) involved a trip to Tampa, Florida (not because they live there, but because the United Church of Christ national meeting was there, and LG and I both had to attend). About a week before take-off, I put down the sweater I'm making for Husband, found a pattern I liked, and bought some yarn.

Side note: can I just take a moment to say how excited I am that Malabrigo is making a superwash worsted now? I'm surely the last person on the planet to have discovered this, but DUDE. Rios is an amazing yarn. I am totally smitten. I would use it for non-baby projects! I would make big-person-sized sweaters out of it! Hooray for gorgeous kettle-dyed superwash wool!

Okay. So I bought the Malabrigo Rios -- two skeins, just in case, but it turns out that I only needed one -- and cast on and had the body, like, a third of the way done by that evening. I knitted on the plane to Florida, I knitted in meetings whenever I could... At one point, LG said to me, "by the way, I haven't seen you knitting here! Are you working on anything? What are you making?" And I got a little cagey. I think I said something like, "Yeah, I'm working on something. I'll, uh, show you later." She got it, and did not push. This is the sign of a good friend-of-a-knitter.

Anyway, I finally finished the sweater about 3 or 4 days in to the meeting. And it totally needed to be blocked. Fortunately, I was staying in a fabulous Embassy Suites suite, and was therefore well-supplied with both space and tools. I pulled out the ironing board and iron, grabbed a washcloth, and went to town with a bit of washcloth-steam blocking. It's a sweet little sweater, but those leaves on the front don't stay flat on their own! (LG, now that the sweater is blocked, you shouldn't have to worry about this again.)

Also, I accidentally dyed the washcloth purple. Sorry, Embassy Suites!

It all worked out in the end. The blocking part, that is. I honestly have no idea if the hotel got the dye out of the washcloth, but I would assume they did. Hotels are generally pros at bleaching the towels.

And the finished product came out nicely. The Cascade pattern is really cute, and very simple to make. I didn't make any modifications this time, but if I were to do it again (and I might some day) I'd make a sixth leaf at the bottom of the placket instead of cutting it off at 5 for the seed-stitch band. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to add, although I understand why the author wrote the pattern the way she did.

I added on the buttons during the business meetings on the next-to-last day of the event. We introduced electronic voting this year, and it took a bit of experimentation to get the hang of sewing on a button and pressing the clicker-thingy at the same time (in the past we just had cards to hold up, which isn't as hard because it doesn't involve the same set of fine motor skills that sewing on buttons requires). It all worked fine, and the buttons looked good AND I voted for important stuff like LGBT human rights.

Most importantly, LG and her husband Backbencher loved the sweater. And I'm sure that BabyLG will look adorable in it this fall, when it actually fits her. LG has promised to send a photo of BabyLG in the finished product when it does fit. For now, just enjoy this Jared-Flood-esque photo of the button band.

Enter Tiberius

2011-06-26T00:05:00.004-04:00

I know I said I didn't want to be one of those women who posts a picture of her cat every single time she updates. But I said that before Tiberius the Kitten entered our lives. He's been around for a whole, like, three days now.

If it bugs you that I might be one of those secretly-not-a-knit-blogger-but-a-cat-blogger-instead types, just focus on the fact that this is also a progress shot of the labyrinth rug. Also, there's a sneak peek of another project in here, but it's not at all obvious what it is. It's mysterious. Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

(Seriously, Tiberius has stolen my heart. He has the loudest purr I've ever heard. Also, he'll immediately grab your finger with his little kitten-paws and start licking it the moment he meets you. He slept in my lap while I knitted this afternoon -- it only took two or three times to disentangle him from the needles before he got the picture. Now that's one awesome kitten!)

It's About Darn Time!

2011-06-16T03:26:00.000-04:00

I've been married for four years, this coming August. Before that, we were "together" for about three years. All told, Husband and I have been basically inseparable for nearly seven years. In that time, I've knit him hats and mittens and scarves and who knows what else... but I've never knit him a sweater.

I tried once. I bought some awesome local yarn, and we even went to the farm together and met the sheepies who grew the wool. He picked out a pattern and I cast on... and knit maybe 2 rows? This yarn did not want to be this pattern, and it was just wrong. Wrong! So I stopped. I haven't even bothered to frog those two rows. The yarn and needles are still in the box on a shelf, waiting for me to do something with them. Anything. That shelf is like a big void in that room. I can't even look at it.

But recently, Husband actually started making noises about wanting me to knit him a sweater. How many dang sweaters have I knit for myself? How many babies have I knit for? And then one day, of his own volition, he picked up my copy of Son of Stitch n' Bitch and found two different sweaters he liked. "You could maybe knit me one of these," he said "Which one do you like better?" Because he is subtle like that.

Ohhhhhh that Husband of mine, he is a smooth operator.

So I picked the one I thought would look better on him: Biker Boy (Rav link). This is a basic zippered cardigan. I've never done anything big with a zipper before, so even though it's a pretty simple pattern, there is still a challenge built in to this experience. The pattern has a dumb skull inset and some other silly color detailing, but we're just keeping it solid gray, no frippery. Skulls aren't really Husband's style, but he's excited that the double-layer neck will give him some extra insulation in the winter. We went to Northeast Fiber Arts to choose some yarn together (setting myself up for success this time), and I cast-on on Easter, after I took a looooong nap.

Here's the beginning. Most of the body -- I did some while he was away traveling, so stopped at a point where I thought I should measure it on him but he wasn't around -- and the cuffs of the sleeves, started when the body got too big to carry in my purse. Thanks to the awesome Knitpicks Options needles that Husband gave me for Christmas, I have that... uh, option.

The yarn is Cascade Rustic -- a 79% wool/21% linen single-ply blend. He wanted something tweedy, but NEFAC has trouble getting tweed to sell so they don't stock much. We went with this interesting not-quite-tweed instead. It's soft, and not as splitty as I was afraid it would be (given 220 Superwash's proclivities, I steer clear of most Cascade yarns now), and I've been pretty happy with it. Not a yarn I expect to want to knit with again in the future, but not one I'd turn down if the situation called for it.

Husband is happy with the sweater so far. Occasionally he looks over and says, "Oh, that's really niiiice" when he sees me working on it. Like I said, smooth operator.

And I guess he has to be, if he's ever going to get a handknit sweater from me. Seven years is a long wait.

Lizard Ridge Update #4

2011-06-11T15:08:00.003-04:00

Or, "I'm getting really creative with these blog post titles, aren't I?"

Been a little while, huh? Thanks for those of you who've prodded me to get back to blogging. First there was Easter, which is kind of a big deal. And then there was recovery from Easter (known as "May" to most of you). And then I had a bicycling accident in mid-May, just as I was getting back in the saddle, pun intended. (My first ride of the year! It was going to be a seven-miler! Instead, it was a four-miler, a head-over-handlebars flight, and a trip to the ER!) (I'm okay, just had lots of big bruises, but I went to the doc to get checked just in case.) And now I'm recovered for real.

And I had a spare Saturday, because I'm not preaching tomorrow, and it's a rainy day. Would have gone to the WWKIP gathering in City Hall Park today, but between some work-work I had to catch up on and the rain, I decided that I would just K-BIP (Knit-Blog in Public) instead.

So! Without further ado...

It's the Lizard Ridge blanket. The knitting is all finished. I have to block it and seam it, then do the edging. I bought a nice light gray, much to the dismay of my good old Finnish friend who has just learned about this blog. I think it will make all the colors stand out equally -- my fear with the forest green is that it will bring out the dark patches, especially the greens, but the light bits will get lost and the reds will look out of place. But the gray will offset all the colors nicely.

The blocking is on hold for the moment -- meaning that the entire project is on hold -- because we are in the process of fixing up one of our upstairs bedrooms at the moment. That means that (1) all the stuff from Bedroom A is now in Bedrooms B and C, and both spare beds are covered in the stuff from Bedroom A, and (2) there is a ton of plaster dust up there and I don't want it to get all over my lovely handiwork. So blocking will have to wait until that room is painted and cleaned, so that both the stuff and the dust are in their proper places, and I get at least one spare bed back.

But you have some idea of what Lizard Ridge is going to look like now. And that's fun. Happy Hiatus-is-over!

Lizard Ridge Update #3

2011-04-17T16:55:00.002-04:00

Here's another progress shot of Lizard Ridge. SOOOO CLOSE!!!!! 3 strips done, one more well on its way.

I'm starting to think about what color to use as a border. The downside of using as many different skeins of Kureyon as I could get is that there's not one single color that makes the most sense for a border. But it definitely needs a solid-color border to ground it. I'm kind of thinking that a dark green would be good -- there's a surprisingly large amount of green in this blanket -- but I could also see arguments for a medium-aqua. Or a medium/light gray, not so heavy?

Thoughts? Suggestions? Is there another color I should be considering? Help me, loyal readers! You're my only hope!

Things That Will Look Better When Blocked

2011-04-14T04:39:00.000-04:00

That last post about the Sunflower Tam was originally titled "Things That Will Look Better When Blocked" because... well, really, that hat looks a little bit terrible right now, and could definitely use some time drying on a soup bowl.

The other item I've knitted -- and, I'm not ashamed to say, I've been wearing -- that desperately needs blocking is this shawl. I made it a year ago (literally! According to my Ravelry notebook, I worked on it April 10-16, 2010) and just haven't gotten around to blocking it. It's pretty like this, but I do know that the blocking will really make a positive difference, too.

Anyway, this is the Trinity Shawlette, made with a gorgeous locally-made yarn from the Fuzzy Bunny, creatively called "Wool 2-ply yarn," which I bought at Nido. The colorway is a bit crazy -- mustard yellow, apple green, and aqua -- and totally not something I would normally buy (or something you would probably think of as a colorway I'd like at all), but I LOVE IT. And it turns out it works with so much of my wardrobe. And this shawl is perfect in spring and fall, with its wacky bright colors. It makes me very happy.

Seriously, click on that last link for an amazing photo of the yarn in skein form. It's GORGEOUS enough that I need to use all caps to describe it.

Maybe one of these days I'll get around to blocking it properly, so that when I wear this shawl I will be doing justice to the amazing yarn.

Where DID I See Myself in Five Years?

2011-04-11T16:03:00.006-04:00

I did need to take a break from Lizard Ridge. Just to knit something else. And I'm glad I did, because I quickly found that I've been short-row-ing for so long that it was actually a challenge to get my hands to knit plain again. Weird!

Anyway, I decided that I needed a new hat. I have been wearing the same Sunflower Tam (Rav link) for a zillion years now (I knitted it back when we lived in Atlanta -- living in the South, knitting a hat was an act of faith!) and I love it but it's not holding up in the New England winters as well as I'd like. The problem is that it's 100% alpaca (again, act of faith! Alpaca is 4x warmer than wool!), and the ribbing "relaxed" enough that it's no longer tight around the ears. Although the hat itself is very warm, the wind comes right in and defeats the purpose of wearing a hat at all. So I decided that I need a wool one. Voila:

Knitting up a new Sunflower Tam was a really good exercise, not just for getting past short rows, but also because it gave me a chance to reflect on how far I've come in the five-ish years since I knitted the last one. There's "far" in the literal sense, moving from Atlanta to Burlington, but there's also "far" in the knitting-skill sense. Five years ago, the Sunflower Tam was a really challenging pattern for me. The fact that every single row was different was intimidating. The funny crossed stitches that stood out over the rest of the pattern were difficult to understand. I learned so much from this pattern, and I was so proud of myself when I'd finished. Five years ago, the Sunflower Tam was hard to make.

Now, not so much. It took me two evenings to finish. The crossed stitches took a moment for me to figure out, but I didn't have to read the instructions for them every single time I encountered the direction to do one. I watched TV while knitting, because I didn't have to concentrate so hard on the row-by-row pattern. The Sunflower Tam pattern was FAR more intuitive the second time around.

What a difference five years makes, eh?

Makes me think back to my life five years ago -- and that classic interview question, "where do you see yourself in five years?" Most of what I expected for myself has come true. By now I figured I'd be married to Husband (check!), working in a church (check! -- although 5 years ago I didn't think I was going to be a solo pastor, and now I have a hard time imagining anything else), a homeowner (check!), and a mother (ummmm, not-check). The other details, like where I'd be living, were less important at the time -- although 5 years ago I don't know if I'd dreamed I could be fortunate enough to live in Burlington, Vermont, a place I adore. It's really wonderful to look back on where I've been over the past five years and know that I'm far more satisfied with my life (aside from the no-kids thing) than I really expected I would be five years ago.

Knitting a new Sunflower Tam made me reflect on how truly blessed I am. I guess knitting will do that sometimes.

Details: Yarn is Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran (now discontinued) in Merlot, ~1.5 skeins (two different dye lots but you'd never know), on size 9 needles (size 8 for ribbing -- I might take out the ribbing and redo it on 7s). It will look much better when blocked.

Lizard Ridge Update #2

2011-04-03T23:40:00.002-04:00

Another plane ride, another Lizard Ridge strip begun.

I worked pretty furiously to get the second strip finished before I went on my Great Midwestern Tour 2011 (Des Moines, Grinnell, Iowa City, Madison, AND Milwaukee! With a drive through Dubuque for good measure! Wooo! Again with the exciting life!), but it just didn't happen. And I wasn't going to cart around that whole strip for just those final rows.

So I started a new strip on the plane leaving Burlington (cast on during take-off!), and knitted my way through the Midwest. (I did not knit while driving through the Iowa or Wisconsin countrysides, Mom. I was too busy looking out the window.) And after a week in the Midwest and another week home (where I mostly worked, and did very little knitting except when I saw some knitting gals one evening), I'm about 2/3 of the way through the third strip.

I am really digging how this is turning out. It doesn't look nearly as garish in person as it does on the computer, for one thing. But also, I am totally fascinated with the way the colors are changing in the Noro as it progresses. So cool! It's like every row is a new discovery. I know I've said that before, but it still feels true. I am starting to itch to work on something else (don't know what, but just to be done with the darn short-rows for a while), but I fear that if I take a break I won't pick it up again for a long time, and then I'll have 3/4 of a Lizard Ridge blanket sitting on the UFO pile. Dumb dumb dumb. Gotta push on. My fascination with the ever-changing colors will have to carry me through.

Doc really seems to think this blanket is for him. He's certainly making himself comfortable.

(Please tell me I'm not turning into that lady who posts a picture of her cat at the end of every freakin' post. I don't want to be that lady. I stopped reading her blog altogether because the cat pictures were that annoying. Nobody cares about your fancy-pants purebred whatsit cat as much as you do. This will have to be the last Doc picture for a while, because OMG you don't care about the upside-down kitty, and I should be able to keep it to myself.)

BSJ Received

2011-03-31T01:33:00.000-04:00

Baby Surprise Jacket #6 is finished.
(I know I packed the buttons when I went on vacation, but I couldn't find them when I got to the house and was ready to sew them on. Buttonless BSJ it is!

New Mama is very happy with her gift. "It's a California Hippie Baby Jacket!" she exclaimed. I think this one will get some good use, buttons or no.

Momentous Occasion

2011-03-28T11:17:00.003-04:00

Stop the presses! Something big has happened!

Remember these mittens? They were my first experiment in stranded knitting wayyyy back two years ago. I thought they'd be difficult and a big ol' mess, but it turns out I'm a quick study with the Fair Isle work, and I churned out a bunch more pairs over the next year.

But these were my first pair, and that's something special. So I wore them as my primary mittens in cold weather. And there's a lot of cold weather. Still, you get used to a thing when you do it a lot, so imagine my surprise the other day when I put on these mittens, hopped in my car, and felt the steering wheel strangely cold against my thumb!

That's right! I have worn my way through the thumb of my accidental mittens! It's the first time I've ever worn a hole in anything I've knit myself.

In my world, this is something I'd call "Very Exciting."

Now you know what a thrilling life I lead. A hole! Wooo!

I am undecided as to whether I will knit myself a new thumb in these mittens, or just wear a different pair. It's not like I don't have plenty of others to pull out of the mitten pile.

I'm sure you're all on the edge of your seats to find out what I choose.

Baby Surprise (it's yet another) Jacket!

2011-03-17T17:17:00.001-04:00

Okay, so my friend I've been knitting a baby gift for is currently on an airplane, headed in my direction (well, actually, we're meeting up in Madison, WI. But I'm already there, and she's in a plane). So I can finally show you photos of what I've been making for her, since she'll be receiving her gift soon.

Surely you knew I'd be making her a BSJ, right? RIGHT? I mean, come on.

Here is BSJ #5, also known as "green is a unisex color for babies!" I'm all about gender-neutral clothing for babies anyway, and it seems like the only way you can get them these days is to make them yourself. Also, when I started knitting the sweater, we didn't know if the baby is supposed to be a boy or a girl anyway, and I don't know if they're going to find out or not. Also-also, I had some green superwash left from another baby project I was doing at the same time. And some navy blue. And seriously, what's cuter than a navy blue stripe on a baby sweater?

So the question is, can you spot the error in this sweater? Can you tell why I had to rip and redo a few inches of BSJ?

It's right there. One side of picked-up stitches came out on the wrong side. Whoops.

Also, it turns out I ran out of green yarn before the end of the sweater, so I had to get creative with my striping. Still, though. Seriously cute!

(FO photo to follow, after the Proud Mama has actually received it.)

Also yes, those are the Knitpicks Harmony Options needles. My darling Husband gave them to me for Christmas. He's the best.

Lizard Ridge is SO COOL!

2011-03-13T01:05:00.001-05:00

Okay, seriously? I knew that the Lizard Ridge blanket was going to be cool. But I had no way to conceive of how it was all going to come together. It's way awesome.

This progress shot is at about 40%, I'd say. There are five skeins of Kureyon per strip, and the ones shown in this photo are #3 and #4 on the second strip. Instead of knitting blocks of a single skein and then seaming them together (hello, I hate seaming, we know this about me), I'm just knitting with two skeins at a time and seeing what happens, until skein #5. That one gets doubled onto itself.

Anyway, it's super-cool, and constant discovery of the "what's the next stripe going to look like?" has me totally engaged and knitting like a madwoman. So much fun!

Also, there's been more travel lately, and it was very easy to throw the two starter skeins in my carry-on and cast on in the plane. Who knew a blanket could be good travel knitting? But it was. For a 3-day jaunt to Cleveland last week, it was just right.

Doc likes the blanket, too. He can't wait to see how it turns out.

(And yes, I'm doing the garter ridges modification. I knew you would ask.)

Not Just Any Baby Gift

2011-03-10T11:08:00.001-05:00

When your really awesome knitting friend -- the one who got you back into knitting in the first place -- the one who reminded you of everything about knitting that your mom taught you when you were eight and you had since forgotten -- the one who would teach you how to do new knitting techniques while you were both waiting backstage before the choir concert -- the one whose now-defunct knitting blog first inspired your own still-going knitting blog -- the one who still, 10+ years after it all started, insists that you take turns flying across the country just so you can knit together every four months or so -- when that knitting friend gets pregnant, what the heck do you knit her?

Not just any baby gift.

You go to Northeast Fiber Arts. You buy 20 skeins of Debbie Bliss Rialto DK (you hope you can return whatever you don't use, but it turns out you can't return it after 30 days, and you've picked a project that you will spend more than 30 days doing, if only because you are a pastor and you were dumb enough to buy the yarn before Christmas and then leave it sitting in a bag for a month before casting on in the first place). You grab your Mason-Dixon Knitting book (the first one). And you cast on for the Moderne Baby Blanket. For this particular knitting friend, you will Log-Cabin your little heart out.

And then you make yourself write a blog post about it so that you are forced to block the darn thing and put it in the actual mail.

I can't wait to welcome you to the world, Baby Knitting Queen! I love you already!

Startitis Strikes Again

2011-03-04T23:00:00.001-05:00

Someday, this orderly-yet-haphazard collection of Kureyon is going to be the Lizard Ridge Blanket.

As of this writing, I've got 10% done. That's two skeins of 20. My hands already hurt.

(It may be the new Harmony Options needles that are making my hands hurt. I'm in denial, though, as Husband gave them to me for Christmas. To be fair, I picked them out in the first place. Also: they're PRETTY.)

Anyway, this is the order of how I'm going to knit these skeins. The finished product is, miraculously, not going to look anything like this photo. That is the amazing thing about Noro. I swear, those people are geniuses.

More Photographic Evidence

2011-03-01T01:39:00.000-05:00

This is the current state of my Labyrinth Rug. I have started sewing the fabric around the filler cord. And I've started sewing the coil to itself (you can see it on the left, I swear). But now it's kind of a tangled mess in the middle of my living room floor. And it may be like this indefinitely, as I can't figure out how I was making the seam before, and it's not as nice-looking on my later attempts.

"But, Holyknitter," you say, "won't the seam be sewn up in such a way that you can't see it anyway? Why does it matter if it doesn't look consistent or even particularly nice?"

BECAUSE. I say. JUST BECAUSE. I will know, and I will care, and it will drive me crazy if I know it's not done right. So there.

Maybe I could just move this giant blob of yarn and filler cord to the bedroom where the rug is supposed to go? Husband would be okay with that, don't you think?

I Promised You Pictures

2011-02-26T10:33:00.000-05:00

This, my friends, is the new skein of Bulldog Blue needed for my Minimalist Cardigan. It appears to match the other dye lot, so I think we're good to go. I don't even think I'm going to have to do the stripey-knitting-to-get-the-sleeves-to-match thing.

This is totally going to work. It's going to be awesome.

Now I just have to pick up the sweater and start working on it again. Easier said than done.

Adventures with Aubrey

2011-02-24T08:46:00.001-05:00

My friend Aubrey and I have a winter CSA share that we split from Lewis Creek Farm, where our friends Hank and Mango live. Mango, being a knitter herself, encourages us to come in and knit by the woodstove in the cozy farmhouse kitchen when we go pick up our monthly bags-O-food, and so CSA day has become kind of a "thing" for us. It's not just a matter of popping down to the farm and then coming back home. It's a day-long (or at least afternoon-long) prospect.

But this weekend, both Mango and Hank were out of town, and it was still a CSA pick-up day. So Aubrey and I threw caution to the wind and hopped in the car for a little adventure. First we stopped by the farm and picked up our food. Aubrey's dog Cisco threw up in the car on the way there (poor puppy gets carsick -- who knew?) so I took him on a little walk around the barn while Aubrey cleaned her backseat in the farm parking area.

Then we hopped back in the car and headed south, which we've never done on that road before. What fun, to see a new part of the state! We stopped in Bristol and got coffee and pastries, next went to Knits and Bolts in New Haven for a little yarn indulgence (very nice store; friendly owners/employees, good selection, good sale room! I don't head south very often with extra time to shop , but I like to support them when I can.).

Then we went down to Middlebury and walked around -- our original plan was to hit the yarn stores there, too, but one is closed-for-business and the other was closed-for-the-day by the time we got there. But we wandered into a few shops (complicated to do with a dog, but one of us stayed with the puppy while the other went in and browsed, and then we switched) and yet another bakery for more pastry goodness, and then hit the road. Next time we do a Vermont yarn adventure, we'll be sure to check store hours before we go. But still--SO FUN! Thanks, Aubrey and Cisco, for a great day!

Fun with Stats!

2011-02-22T13:10:00.006-05:00

There are very few subjects I didn't enjoy studying in school. And, if I'm being frank, there were very few subjects that I wasn't good at when I studied them. I'm pretty sure there's a correlation -- I like doing things I'm good at doing, or I'm good at doing things I like doing, either way. But there was one subject in middle school that I hated so much--and I was so bad at doing--that I actively avoided taking it in high school, and then avoided all subjects that required it as a prerequisite in college: statistics. I was terrible at statistics. Probability, really. I get flipping a coin. I get rolling dice. But that's about it. And I don't even understand those very well: add in margins of error, and I'm confused all over again. Calculating that stuff is just beyond me.

But if someone gives me numbers to look at -- like, polling numbers on election day, something like that -- I do find them fascinating. The real-life application helps.

So when I tell you that Blogger is now showing me a Stats tab, you can maybe anticipate the progression of thoughts that went through my head. First was "OH GOD NO." What can I say? The reptilian fight-or-flight part of my brain is pretty quick. Then I remembered that I would not be tested on these stats, and I thought "well, it might be interesting to see what kind of things Blogger is measuring." It's number of pageviews, what kinds of browser my readers are using, where these readers live in the world, and where they came from to link to my page. I can look at stats broken down by time: stats are listed in terms of "today," "this week," "this month," "this year," and "all time." This is geeky-cool.

So now I know that people are connecting to my blog from Ravelry (which is not really a surprise), but that more people are connecting from my friend Elizabeth's blog than they are from Ravelry. Crazy! And the most-viewed page is my Snail Hat post -- so something I said there was apparently very helpful, and maybe the word has gotten out? In the last week, there have been as many as 10 people reading my blog at the same time. Ten! Who knew I even had ten readers total, much less ten at the same time?

And, not entirely surprisingly, most of my readers are from the United States... but the second-highest population of my readers are in the Netherlands. Not what I'd have thought. At all. If you'd asked me if I thought anyone from the Netherlands was reading my blog, I'd have laughed and said no. Canada, sure. UK, maybe. But the Netherlands? Not likely. (See? I have trouble with probability.)

So I'd like to give a shout out to my Dutch readers. Welcome! I'm glad to have you checking in from time to time! Also, my readers in China, and Australia, and Russia, and Brazil, and Germany, and India, and the United Arab Emirates (!?!?!??!!!!)... y'all, I had no idea you were out there. I'm grateful and humbled, and it makes me want to be a better blogger. I've got to be honest and tell you that it's not likely I'm going to get my blogging act together anytime soon (again with the probabilities... I could be wrong!), but knowing you're actually out there is pretty nice. So thanks for reading.

And if you're a reader from some non-USA country, please drop a line in the comments. I may or may not be able to respond in a timely manner, but I will appreciate knowing where you're from! And I'll try to respond eventually. I have done a bit of world travel (mostly Europe, several times) and it's great fun to learn about new places and new people. So say hello! Bonjour! Dobra dyen!

...And, um, if you are from the Netherlands, can you please tell me how to say "hello" in Dutch? This is apparently a hole in my education.

(Yes, Mom, I'll be sure to show you the stats stuff when I'm home. I know you want to see it.)

Making Progress

2011-02-19T23:05:00.005-05:00

Okay. It's been a while since I posted. I have been knitting, but I have been knitting baby gift things for friends, many of which are surprises. In the interest of not blowing the surprise, I haven't been posting.

Also, I am again stuck by my inability to transfer photos from my Blackberry to my computer. Apparently there is this thing called a "cable" that "plugs in" to connect the two, but... well, it's all the way over in my desk drawer, and that's in a whole 'nother room. Too difficult.

But:
*I have started sewing the labyrinth rug around the filler cord. It's taking for-freaking-ever. It's also been sitting on my living room floor for four months now. Every morning, as I'm getting dressed and standing on my cold bedroom floor in bare feet, I think "man, I wish that rug were finished so I could have something warm to stand on." Motivation. I got it. But apparently not enough.
*Baby Gift #1 is finished, I just have to block and cut ends (which are already woven in, thankyouverymuch.
*Baby Gift #2 is almost finished. There is one seam and a little bit of end-weaving, and then it's done too. A one-seam baby gift? You should know what this is. Mama may or may not read my blog. I see her in 5 weeks, so this will get finished up relatively soon.
*I purchased that one final skein of yarn I needed for my Minimalist Cardigan today! HUZZAH! I was (a) in a store that sells LPW in Bulldog Blue and (b) remembered to buy it! At the same time! Tomorrow I will look at the yarn in the daylight and make sure it actually matches. This is a huge step in finally finishing the darn thing. A year ago I wrote a post in which I admitted to working on the darn thing for "a shamefully long time." A year ago. And since then? No progress. Until today!
*I also purchased the one last skein of yarn I needed for the Lizard Ridge Blanket I've been wanting to do for a while. I shall cast on for this soon. I know, I know, I could have started it without that one last skein, but I want to look at everything I have and do a bit of strategizing with the colors before I cast on. It's a getting-the-big-picture thing, because I know I won't like the finished product if I don't plan it right from the beginning.

Here. A photo from the "archives" because I can't give you anything new. This is Doc deciding he likes the Kiki Mariko rug. And looking kind of undignified at the same time. Poor sweet kitty.

5?th Blogiversary

2011-02-06T00:01:00.000-05:00

Holy knit! I can't believe I've had a knitting blog for 5 years. How in the world can this be? 5 years? 2006 to 2011? Anyway, whatever the number is, happy blogiversary. Thanks for reading. I'm terrible at responding to comments, but I appreciate them anyway!

In Case You Were Wondering...

2010-12-18T22:42:00.000-05:00

...this is what 20 yards of 1" diameter filler cord looks like. Coffee cup for scale.

One step closer to having a finished Labyrinth Rug.

Apologies

2010-12-16T13:58:00.005-05:00

Hi Beloved Readers,

I'm having some technical difficulties with getting my phone to talk with flickr -- no pictures, so no updates. My actual camera is with my husband, who is working on a cruise ship this fall and therefore has far more interesting things to take pictures of than I do. Things like this:

And this:
And also this:
Okay, these are all pictures taken when I went to visit him in the Caribbean this fall. I didn't take any knitting with me.

I have done a ton of traveling this fall (this has been an amazing and unprecedented year in travel, on the whole), and only some knitting.

Updates:

Minimalist Cardigan: still in limbo. I need to just order another darn skein of the yarn and be done with it. I have tried to find the right dye lot on Ravelry, and it just ain't happening. Did you even remember I was working on this one? It's been a looooong time.
Labyrinth Rug: Need to buy the filler cord. I'm pretty close to done, have probably 2 feet of knitting to go. I plan to paint our bedroom soon, and this will be incentive to finish up the darn rug and put it in there!
Have attempted the February Lady Sweater (Rav link) three times now, have frogged twice (I swear, I know how to read patterns, but apparently not this one) and gotten discouraged. I'm not sure I've chosen the right yarn -- and I think this particular yarn wants to be something else.
Sent off the Owl Vest as-is, with a note saying I wouldn't be insulted if she wanted to get rid of the outlined owl, and instructions on how to do so. No photo of baby-in-vest yet, but I'm assured I can post it when she sends it.
Have made fingerless mitts and an improvised headband-thingy to match.
Have made baby booties for a Secret Santa gift.
Am making mittens for a Christmas gift for my nephew. Yes, Selbu mittens. Sigh.

I swear, one day there will be pictures of these items. For now, just pretend you're on that beach. It's in Antigua. The water was wonderfully warm.

Labyrinth Rug Update No. eleventy-dozen

2010-09-14T11:48:00.000-04:00

I've been working on the Labyrinth Rug. I mean, seriously, I started it three years ago. It's about time I actually haul off and finish it. It's summertime, I'm indecisive about what project I want to start next (there are lots of things I want to have, but nothing I want to start right now), I should really haul off and work on this thing.

The little piece of paper marks 30 feet (the halfway mark). The newer piece of paper marks 47 feet, and I've knit about 5 feet more since then. So close! One of these days I'm going to have to hit the hardware store and purchase 60 feet of that filler cord.

I was thinking about going longer than 60 feet, because I'd like the rug to be bigger than 3-4 feet across, but at this point I'd really have to knit a LOT to impact the diameter of the rug (seeing as how it's the circumference, not the diameter, that I'm actually knitting), so I think it's not worth it. Somebody online bought 1-inch filler cord instead of the 1/2-inch cord called for in the book, and I think I'm going to do the same. That will increase the diameter of the rug far more effectively than making the spiral bigger.

Stay tuned! I think it's going to happen relatively soon -- I've got some travel ahead of me (and this is not a traveling project) but other things are coming together to give me some external incentive to finish the rug. Those other things may or may not involve finally getting around to painting the bedroom.

Opinions?

2010-09-09T11:40:00.004-04:00

Owl vest is done! (Actually, it was done quite a while ago, I just haven't posted until now.)

I'm not entirely sure I love the owlie outlined with duplicate stitch this way. It is starting to grow on me, though. Except that, really, I was thinking it would be kind of like the LaCoste alligator (this is for a Texas baby -- Dallas parents who now live in Austin), and I've now realized that the owls will be marching across his tummy, not his pecs. That kind of makes me love the outlining less in general. So I'm soliciting opinions. What do you think of the outlined owl? Should I take it out altogether? Should I do a different kind of stitching (I also tried chain and blanket, and they both didn't work -- duplicate is the best of what I've tried so far)? What to do?

Owls!

2010-08-19T00:02:00.001-04:00

My friend Amanda had a baby a couple of weeks ago. I tend to be pretty bad about knitting gifts for friends' babies, and I'd like to be better about it. I used the awesome new Ravelry search tool (Rav link), and found the Owl Baby Vest (and again), grabbed some Superwash 220 and my size 4 and 5 circulars, and knit this baby up in about 3 days.

Well, okay, it's been about 3 days so far. I'm almost done, but as of this writing, still have the ribbing around the arm holes to complete. Soon... I've got to block it and mail it before Baby G. outgrows it! It would be big on him right now -- and should be just right for a Texas winter! -- but knowing how bad I tend to be about getting things in the mail... I've got to seize the moment.

I did make a couple of minor mods in the pattern, nothing big. I put the decreases for the v-neck and armholes in one stitch on each side (so instead of p2tog, p to last 2 sts, p2tog, I did a p1, p2tog, p to last 3 sts, p2tog, p1). I also mirrored the decreases. And I thought the V-neck instructions made the V look a bit sloppy, so fudged that a little bit in order to make the V look better. And instead of 8 sts wide for the top of the shoulders, I went with 9 sts. Just a smiiiiidge more width, and the baby's head will still be able to get through the neck hole just fine.

Look! OWLS! CUTE!!!

I'm toying with the idea of outlining one of the owls in white or light blue -- some kind of contrasting color -- but don't want to buy a whole ball for just one yard. Any Burlington friends have some scraps of Superwash 22o in white or light blue?

Done with Mittens (for now)

2010-08-16T11:55:00.006-04:00

I finished NHM #13. It was fine for travel knitting, but maaaaaan I am done with mittens for a while, and finishing this pair was like pulling teeth. I vaguely intend to knit all -- or almost all -- the Selbuvotter patterns eventually, but... I'm going to take a break for a while. Ugh.

Anyway, they're done. After a serious Mad Men marathon, I finally got enough done on the second mitten that it really wasn't okay for me to put off doing the thumbs any longer. Progress shot:

And Finished Object Photo:

Iona again

2010-08-01T10:44:00.000-04:00

Getting a lot of blog mileage out of this Scotland trip...

My last day on Iona, I took a looooong walk to the southern end of the island, where St. Columba first landed, according to legend. The whole week I was there, whenever I'd go for a walk, I'd end up losing the trail somehow and getting lost (varying degrees of lost) and this day was no exception. After probably 40 minutes of bumbling around in the heather and my shoes and socks getting uncomfortably wet, I finally found A path. And yes, I was at the point where I didn't care where the path went: it was a path, and it must lead somewhere. (After all, it's a 3-mile square island: how lost can one get?)

It led to the island golf course... which also happens to be the "Common Grazing Grounds."

That sand in the foreground? That's a sand trap.

More fun with sheep

2010-07-30T22:36:00.000-04:00

The sheep in Scotland are not comfortable with people. Or, at least, the ones I met weren't. On my next-to-last day in Iona, I went out for a walk with someone I met in my hotel dining room, determined to get a photograph of me touching a sheep. Turns out, this quest was quite a process. (And yes, that's my Shalom cardigan.)

First I sidled up close to the sheep in question -- a mama with two lambies grazing on some rocks by the ocean, on the far-northern tip of the island.

I drew closer and closer...

And then she tried to pee on me. It was hilarious. And quite an effective deterrent! While I was laughing, she went to a different part of the rocks.

I did eventually have success, and got photographic evidence.

Hooray! Victory!

Sheep!

2010-07-26T07:18:00.000-04:00

So, on my trip in June, I went to Iona. It was amazing.

I went because I'm working on a book -- yes, I am! Hence less knitting lately, and less blogging as well -- and I was given a fellowship that would allow me to get away and write for a while. So I went to a remote and holy place (Iona), holed up in a hotel room, and wrote.

I also did other stuff while I was there. Like take long walks every day. And often these walks took me through pastures... with lots of herds of sheep! Like this one, who looked at me like I was an idiot for getting so close:

And this baby, born just a couple of months earlier, who had no idea that it was supposed to be scared of me yet.And a sheep I assume was that lamby's momma, who was pretty mad that I accidentally got between her and her baby. She was NOT happy, and I got out of there quickly.

Back after a Long Absence

2010-07-23T21:10:00.005-04:00

It's been far too long since I've updated. Since you last heard from me, I went to Scotland. Also Chicago. Also... probably other places, too. I've accomplished relatively little in the way of actual knitting in the last couple of months. But I've tried.

See?

That's NHM #13, from Selbuvotter. Random mitten for travel knitting. And that's a Trossach in the background -- part of the mountain range just north of Loch Lomond. Really, really in Scotland. Picture taken out the bus window. Why on a bus? Because the train I was supposed to take from Glasgow to Oban had derailed the day before I got there. Oops. Bus it was!

More on the trip later. For now... mitten in progress!

Yarn: same as usual, MC is Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca&Silk in Lavender, and CC is Frog Tree Alpacas Alpaca sportweight in Forest Green. Lovely combo, but the lavender gets washed out and looks like a slightly off-gray.

Not-an-update

2010-05-05T01:04:00.003-04:00

I have been knitting, I just haven't been taking pictures or writing blog updates. But I will soon, I think. Stay tuned.

I made a pretty shawl and a kitty toy. And went to Boston. And my parents visited. And I've got, like, a job and stuff. Lots of real-life going on, very little blog-life as a result. But still a knitting life! (Always a knitting life.)

The Language of God

2010-04-20T22:48:00.002-04:00

In case anyone was wondering what kind of a church I serve... it's a pretty awesome church. Check out the United Church of Christ!

Good Thing I Like My Shalom Cardigan...

2010-04-18T18:46:00.001-04:00

...'cause it's going to be in my passport photo for the next ten years.

I stopped in to the post office to buy some stamps and ask where I could get a passport photo taken... turns out, they take them at my local PO branch. Next thing I knew, I was getting my picture taken: unshowered, un-makeupped, post-Easter, and wearing whatever I threw on that morning.

Ah, well. We must always be ready to accept the consequences of our actions, right? Really, it's not a bad picture at all.

Doc on a Rug

2010-04-15T01:04:00.000-04:00

Okay, I know I said I wasn't going to milk any more blog posts out of Kiki Mariko... but Doc the Cat just looked so contented sitting there on the rug. He really likes this new addition to the floor (a.k.a. "his territory"), and it made me happy to see him curled up there all on his own.

Of course, when I started taking pictures, he shut his eyes firmly and pretended to ignore me. What you can't tell from this picture is that, every time I said his name, he flopped his tail.

Happy kitty on a rug! How could I not post it?!?!

Easter photo!

2010-04-12T06:23:00.002-04:00

Also, I wore Shalom on Easter Sunday. It made me happy to dress in bright colors like an Easter egg!

This is not the most flattering photo of me, but it is the most flattering photo of the sweater. That's the front door of my church, photo taken after two Easter services, a breakfast, an egg hunt, and a coffee hour. I'm not so much "casually leaning" on the pillar, as I am using the pillar as a support so I don't fall over from sheer exhaustion. (Shortly after this photo was taken, I went home and took a four-hour nap. Made a quick hospital visit first, though.)

I totally knit a sweater in Lent. NOT something I had planned to do or set out as an intention. Knitting a sweater was not my Lenten discipline -- it would have been kind of bizarre and maybe even unprofessional of me to have made knitting a whole sweater start-to-finish an actual goal at such a busy time. But it's kind of cool that I did it. Now I guess I know that I can (if it's chunky yarn and size 10.5 needles and top-down-no-seaming, anyway).

A church member/knitting friend and I talked about this for a while. She, too, knits more during stressful/busy periods. It seems a little counterintuitive, because there's less time for knitting during more busy times: but that's exactly when we *need* the act of knitting the most.

For me, the knitting helps me to create balance -- during busy times like Lent, I need something that's NOT work to occupy my energy and my brainspace sometimes, or I'd burn out. I've got all this nervous energy from the stress of having so much to do, but there are plenty of times when I can't actually use that energy for work-work (can't so much make pastoral care phone calls in the middle of the night, for example). There are times when I *must* do something else -- something that forces me to sit down and relax and spend time with my husband (but without spending a lot of money) and just BE for a while. Knitting is my Holy Timewaster.

We all need a Holy Timewaster. That's where we find sabbath.

Shalom Continued

2010-04-10T17:43:00.004-04:00

When last we left the Shalom Cardigan, I was in a tight spot because I didn't quite have enough yarn to finish the second sleeve. But I had also knitted the body too big, so I was hopeful that ripping and reknitting would achieve a less lumpy-bumpy body AND garner me yarn enough to finish Sleeve #2 without having to cannibalize Sleeve #1.

I frogged the body all the way up to the armholes/yoke garter-ridge, which enabled me to remove the extra bust-area stitches I'd added on the front panels. Funny, I found a note-to-self that I'd made on Ravelry, and I totally should have seen it coming: "body stitches (after arms bound off) = 32+12+47+12+32=135 stitches --> should be 41.5” around bust." I don't know what I was thinking. I do not have a 41.5" bust even when I'm wearing thick clothing. And I was wanting some negative ease in there! (I always forget about calculating for ease.) Clearly, I was doing the planning in a not-good-for-planning state of mind.

So I ripped out the body. I recalibrated my understanding of how the sweater would actually fit on my body, and knit accordingly. This meant I had 28+12+47+12+28=127 stitches around -- and after four rows, I decreased by two on each front panel. After four more rows, I decreased by two again on each front panel, plus decreased two more in the back (near the underarms). Down to 117 stitches. Then I did a little more decreasing for waist shaping, and then some increasing for hip shaping...

And came up with a much more flattering fit. And a ball of leftover yarn that gave me hope. Perhaps I would be able to finish that second sleeve without needing to frog the first after all!

(This is me on Good Friday, home after the noon service, still dressed for work.)

Holy Saturday ended up being an absolutely gorgeous day. And I had managed to wrangle my Holy Week so that I could actually have some sabbath on Holy Saturday instead of having to get work done. So I got to go to my CSA farm (this is not a noraml CSA thing -- my knitter-friend Mango happens to live there) and knit on the porch with my friends.

(This is me and Aubrey diligently knitting away. I must be sewing on a button? Aubrey is working on a BSJ. What a gorgeous afternoon! And yes, Mom, I was wearing sunscreen.)(Thanks Jess for the photo!)

My goal was to finish the sleeve and sew on the buttons, and mayyyyybe even weave in the ends.

... I accomplished my goal. And got my first soft-serve ice cream of the year, too.

The buttons may be a smiiiidge small -- I might go back to NEFAC to get new ones, or I might just see if I can fiddle with the buttonholes themselves to ensmallinate them.

All in all, I'm very pleased with the Shalom Cardigan pattern, and with my modifications to it. The sleeves are great, the fit is great, the whole thing is great great great! I've never really thought that mustard yellow was a good color for me, but I think I'm changing my mind. I expect to wear this baby a lot!

I would totally knit this pattern again, and use this Debbie Bliss yarn again (too bad it's discontinued). Five stars, all around!

Look at me being all modelly, swinging my hair in the breeze! I repeat: it was a gorgeous day.

Shalom Update

2010-04-07T12:50:00.001-04:00

The Shalom Cardigan knit up really fast. Like, realllllly fast. Two weeks after I started, I was nearly done. I did not set out to knit a sweater for Lent, but that's kind of what I did.

But then I encountered two problems.

First, I didn't have quite enough yarn to finish the second sleeve. I knew it was going to be down to the wire, but... I really like the length of the first sleeve (seriously, I think this is the first time I've ever been truly happy with sleeve length -- most of my sweaters end up with sleeves that are slightly shorter than my arms, and I always think "It'll get worked out when I block it," and then it never does), so I'm reluctant to rip out the bottom of Sleeve #1 in order to make them even (and uncomfortably short).

The second problem is that I tried to make this sweater fit my "curves" and I overestimated how big my curves actually are. The danger with using chunky yarn, we know, is that it can sometimes make you look like a chunky person. And I'm not a chunky person. Ain't nothing wrong with being chunky, but that's not what I am and I want my sweater to fit ME! Anyway, I overestimated how big my biggest curves are, and the sweater is... not flattering this way. It's a cardigan, not a ballet wrap -- but I can wrap that baby and get about four inches of chunky overlap. Not pretty!

The good news is that the solution to the second problem (ripping and reknitting the body in a smaller size) then provides a solution to the first problem (more yarn for Sleeve #2). The bad news is that I have to rip and reknit half the dang sweater. But since I'd prefer to have a sweater that actually fits me and I want to wear, rather than spending the time and effort to knit a sweater I won't wear because it doesn't fit... yeah.

Stay tuned... I may or may not have achieved Shalom before Easter.

Shalom Progress

2010-04-05T01:01:00.000-04:00

It's a lot easier to knit a sweater named "peace" than it is to make peace happen in the world. That's my deep observation for the day. Still, both are worth attempting. I figure, if I keep knitting peace, the real thing might come a bit closer too.

The only visible mod you can see here is the buttonband: I've added buttons all the way down, rather than only one at the top. They're spaced strategically -- allllmost evenly, but not quite -- so that the sweater doesn't make a gap in, um, certain places. And there are two close to the bottom (you can't really see the bottommost buttonhole, but it's there and you will see it in future photos). Invisible mods include making a bit more room for my bust, and moving the waist shaping to a place where it actually gets smaller where my waist gets smaller and bigger where my hips get bigger.

There's a smidgeon of an in-progress sleeve on the right-hand side of this pic, too.

This is the progress of a week, amazingly enough. For the first three days or so, I really was knitting up a skein a day. I slowed down a bit, though, when the math for the sleeves took a bit more thought and I was in a not-math-thinking-y kind of place. More on the sleeves when I actually, um, have them done.

The Selbu Project: Part II

2010-04-02T12:47:00.003-04:00

So the big secret behind the Selbu project is this: some seminary friends and I get together every year for a clergy women's retreat, and this year it was my turn to host. Since most of these friends live south of the Mason-Dixon line, I had the brilliant idea to knit a pair of mittens for each of them, to welcome them to the cold weather -- different patterns, different color combos, but all with the same cuffs and from the same book. Originally, I thought I'd be making something like 12 pairs of mittens (not hard: one pair per month would be plenty doable), but as the weekend grew closer and closer and things came up (notably a wedding that several of us were IN, but also just other life-stuff), it became clear that there would not be anything close to 12 people at this weekend. Turns out, we were four strong. And it was a great weekend. We really missed our companions who couldn't make it, but we also felt good about "carrying the torch" this year. (It also turns out that the weather was unseasonably warm and we didn't even need coats most of the time, much less mittens. But still. We had them.)

Coincidentally, all the women who came to visit me have names that begin with C. Since I didn't get their permission to use their names when I posted these pictures, we're just numbering them. The photo above (with the NHM#9s) is C1. C2 (with the NHM#1s) and C3 (with the NHM#3s) are below, hugging goodbye at the airport. I found it fascinating who chose which mittens -- they all knew right away which ones they wanted, and no two people wanted the same pair. Conflict-free mittens! Woo!

I actually have two pairs of mittens left over, and I haven't decided yet what to do with them. Stay tuned, but be warned: they may just marinate in my mitten basket for a while.

Everything Works out for the Best

2010-03-29T10:57:00.004-04:00

Sometimes, the knitting gods work to make everything come together for you. Sometimes, you have to help them out a bit.

I picked up six skeins of a lovely mustard-y Debbie Bliss Donegal Tweed Chunky on super-sale at Northeast Fiber Arts Center at the end of February. I would have bought more, but six skeins was all they had -- and the point of the sale was to get rid of the discontinued stuff, so six skeins was all there was.

Poking around on Ravelry, I decided that the Shalom Cardigan was the sweater that this yarn wanted to be. And a-ha! I had a conference coming up and, even though I was bringing my Confirmation class with me and therefore would be attending to them the whole time, I would still need something to knit on while sitting in the plenaries and workshops. I got myself all ready: wound up a couple of skeins, went to the store to buy the needles... and then all kinds of chaos and drama hit at work, and I stalled on the preparation a bit.

Friday, I went to the conference by myself (fortunately, this conference happened to be in Burlington, at a conference center a mile or so from my house), and I ended up arriving late, straight from the office, and didn't have my knitting with me. That was something of a bummer. Friday night, I went home, printed out the pattern, figured out which modifications I wanted to make and did all the math to make the sweater fit my body a bit better (it's made for a tall skinny gal, and... well, I have curves), dug out the needles I'd bought that week... and realized they were too short. I'd bought the 16" length, and there's just no way I was going to fit all 169 chunky stitches on only 16" of circular needle. But it was 11:30 at night. And I had to pick up the girls at church at 7:30 the next morning, and because I had ducklings to lead around all day, there was no chance of slipping out and hitting the yarn store when it was open.

Cell phones to the rescue. I texted Aubrey: "Are you still up? Do you have size 10.5 circular? Mine is too short -- 16" -- do you have longer?" She texted back: "I only have 40", is that too long?" "Perfect! Can I come pick up now?" And I did. 11:30 at night, Aubrey meets me in her driveway. She's wearing a very long coat and probably not much else. I'm wearing pajama pants, sweater, no bra. I'm trying to make some kind of "needle exchange" joke here, but it's not working. But picture it. (Needle exchange: get it?) What an awesome friend. Thank you, Aubrey.

I finally got to bed about 1:30. Got up at 6:45, made coffee, got dressed, and hit the road. Spent the day at the conference with the girls -- we all had an *awesome* time, and they were so inspired and excited. It was a long day (14 hours!) but an excellent one. And I knitted exactly one skein -- about 2/3 of the whole yoke. At the beginning of the day, one of the girls (the one who isn't the daughter of a heavy knitter) looked at the pattern and said "how much of that are you going to make today?" and I told her I thought I could get the yoke done in a day. Turns out, I was about right: if I hadn't had to rip out half my work at lunchtime because I'd knitted a row I should have purled, I would have had the whole yoke done by the end of the day. As it is, I was pretty happy with 2/3 of it. I worked up exactly one skein of yarn: a football field in length. Nothing to be ashamed of, for sure. When's the last time YOU knit a whole football field in a day?

The next day, I knit up a whole 'nother football field after church AND took a long nap in the afternoon. Yoke done, plus a smidge of the body. A third of the sweater completed (I'm adding sleeves) in only two days. Yeah, I'd say that's pretty decent work. The knitting gods and me, we make a good team.

(more about the mods I made in another post.)

The Selbu Project: Complete!

2010-03-26T23:34:00.000-04:00

Many people (not just my Mom) have been asking to see a picture of all the Selbuvotter mittens I've knit. Since I'm probably done with this project for a while, I thought this was a good time to post a pretty picture of them all lined-up. Or circled-up, as the case may be. Anyway, the gray pair at the top of the circle is the pair I actually wear -- the first pair I made. (You can see how much the pointy fingers have softened after even one winter of wearing. The rest of the mittens... well, that's for another post.

Kiki Mariko in Its Natural Habitat

2010-03-23T20:18:00.000-04:00

I cleaned my entire house so I could take this picture. Also because I had a houseguest coming. Turns out, knitting a rug is a really great incentive to get your spring cleaning done. I'm not even convinced that it's spring yet, but now I've done my spring cleaning! Woo!

(Also, can you tell I'm trying to get a lot of blog mileage out of this rug? This is the end, I promise.)

More Kiki Mariko

2010-03-21T08:09:00.002-04:00

Before felting...

(Husband: You're working really hard to hold it up. Try not to look like it's heavy.
Me: But it is heavy!)

(You can't see, but the bottom edge is hitting the floor in this photo)

Cutting the steek!

(I think they call it a steek because it has the word "eek" in there.)

And after felting/steeking/trimming.

It Really Ties the Room Together

2010-03-17T15:37:00.005-04:00

Kiki Mariko is done!

It started small, last May...

And grew...

And grew...

And then it got too warm to knit on such a big heavy wool project for a while, and there was the whole mittens craze anyway...

And then Mango totally lapped me. She started a Kiki a couple of months ago (claiming to be inspired by me... flattery will get you, well, not everywhere, but close) and actually finished it in a timely manner. FINE. I picked up mine again during the Olympics (not as a Ravelympics project, just as a "I really have to get this done and I am watching a lot of TV anyway" project), and finished the first week of March! Woo! I knit a rug, and it didn't take me a year to do it!

And I figured that, if I didn't felt it right away, I'd let it sit there for an annoyingly long time. So I finished it on a Monday morning (unusual for me to knit during the day on Mondays, unless I'm so drained I can't do anything else) and took it to the laundromat the same day (Husband laughed when I said, "I'm going to do one load of laundry... and felt that rug." Why would he laugh, do you think?). Cut the steek and put it outside to dry (Monday happened to be a gorgeous day), did a little scissor-trimming of stray bits... and voila!

It's a rug!

If I had it to do again, I'd do a few things differently. First, I wouldn't have used the black. It doesn't look quite so bad felted, but it was jarring enough during the knitting that I stopped using it toward the end. Second, I would have made a narrower steek -- four or six stitches would have been just fine, ten is excessive. Mango pointed this out to me, and I went down to eight stitches, but the whole rest of the knitting process I kept thinking about how much yarn those ten stitches (or even eight) wasted. It could have made the rug a smidge longer, right? It probably wouldn't have made a significant difference, but still. What a waste. That was a lot of yarn in the trash when all the trimming was done. Otherwise.... I'm totally happy with the pattern, and with the finished project, and I may very well make another one sometime. Fun knit!

Also, I did ~160 stitches (plus the steek) so the finished rug would be wider than the original. Finished measurements, felted: 51" x 42" I probably need to do a smidge more felting, but for now I'm too excited to have a new rug to let uneven felting stop me from putting this baby in the yellow room! Woo! Rug!

Minimalist Cardigan -- need advice (the sequel)

2010-03-13T08:05:00.000-05:00

...Or what if I did pleats?

Minimalist Cardigan -- need advice

2010-03-12T14:40:00.003-05:00

So I've been working on the Minimalist Cardigan for a shamefully long time now. The truth is, I've gotten stuck: I'm not sure I'm going to have enough yarn for the sleeves to be as long as I want them. I've put up a notice on the ISO/Destash group at Ravelry, but no one's bitten yet (I may get desperate and take a different dye lot -- Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride does tend to be pretty color-reliable from lot to lot). I have been trying to get everything done on the body, including seaming as much as I can, before actually deciding that I need to buy more yarn.

I have another issue with the cardi that is more pressing, though. After steam-blocking the fronts and back -- and kitchenering the two front pieces together* -- it appears that the back is significantly larger than the front. The pieces aren't matching up at the shoulder in any kind of logical way. There's about a three-inch difference, which seems like it's probably too much to fudge where the sleeves are set-in.

What to do? I knit and re-knit the darn back about three times, and would really prefer not to have to frog it -- but if that's what I have to do, I will. Reknitting the back so it's smaller would, after all, mean that I'd have more yarn for the sleeves, and then I wouldn't have to worry about that as much. But I also don't want to have to do any math to figure out how many stitches I should have at the top of the shoulder (um, that's why I used a pattern in the first place: someone has already done the math for me).

I could also undo the kitchener stitch seam and knit a few more inches into the neckband until it's the right size, and then re-kitchener the stitches. But I think the fronts are a good size, and I'm reluctant to do anything that would make the shoulders of the sweater bigger. I like set-in sleeves on me, not drop-shoulder sleeves. I have smallish shoulders, and if my clothes fit too big in the shoulders then you can't tell how slim and cute I really am!

So: help? What should I do?

*Funny story about that kitchener stitch. I went to first-Saturday knitting at Mango's house and spent all afternoon struggling with it. I'm generally not one of those people for whom kitchener stitch is a problem, but I just was NOT GETTING IT that day. And since the only other project I'd brought with me was also a seaming project, it wasn't like just working on something else was really going to be an option. I probably spent three hours hunched over this one seam, and when I left her house I had gotten exactly half of it done. Three hours, for two inches of decent-looking kitchener stitch and two more inches to go. UGH. I went home, finished up some things for Sunday morning, went to bed... got up Sunday, worked all day, grabbed some dinner out, came home to settle in to the Oscars red carpet show... and did the rest of the kitchener seam with no problem. The half-hour red carpet show took longer than the seaming. Sigh. There is a funny shadow in this picture, darnit, so you kind of can see where the seam is, but when you're looking at the piece itself you can't see a thing.

NHM #7

2010-03-08T14:26:00.005-05:00

Or: this post is for my Mom, who calls me and says things like "I've been checking your blog every other day, and you haven't updated!" She also emails me when I misspell things or have poor grammar on Facebook. Thanks, Mom.

NHM #7 is done! Huzzah! This is my sixth pair of Selbuvotter mittens -- and my last for a while, but I will probably pick up more this summer, because there are still a ton of patterns from this book that I want to knit.

I've definitely fallen in to the habit of using Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca and Silk for the Main Color (strength and shine in the silk, fuzzyness and warmth in the alpaca), and Frog Tree Alpaca Sportweight for the Contrast Color (yet more fuzzyness and warmth, plus the soft alpaca is right next to the skin!). I think it's a good combo -- the two yarns aren't exactly the same weight, but close enough. (And I don't like the full-on Alpaca and Silk pair that I wear as much as the pairs that are the combo. And all-alpaca, all-the-time, would be a big fuzzy mess with unsatisfactory stitch definition.) If either of these were publicly-traded companies, I would definitely buy stock.

I finished them a month or so ago (they took me a month, but I worked on other things at the same time and they were really only travel knitting -- one trip to Atlanta/Savannah for meetings, and two jaunts over to Boston to see the nephew), and have been kind of lazy about photographing and posting them. Sorry, Mom. In my defense, it's Lent, and things have been kind of busy.

Hey! It's a Christmas Stocking!

2009-12-24T12:12:00.003-05:00

I started this stocking at least one Christmas ago, maybe two? Finished yesterday while waiting for my car to be inspected. The impetus? My sister told me we had to bring our own stockings for Christmas this year. Thankfully, this one's big enough for the two of us to share, 'cause we've only got the one! Santa's far less picky about receptacles when he comes to our house.

Random big-worsted/small-bulky yarns, size 9 DPNs.

CO 56 sts. knit in the round. Let it sit around for a year if you don't make enough progress for it to be done by Christmas.
At some point, throw a short-row heel in there. It doesn't have to be very good.
At some other point, start decreasing for the toe. Close up the hole when it looks small enough.

Merry Christmas!

Snail Hat!

2009-12-17T11:42:00.002-05:00

Elizabeth Zimmermann's Snail Hat (Rav link) is one I've been wanting to knit for a while (ever since I saw the photo in Vogue Knitting last year, although I have Knitting Without Tears -- it looks so much more appealing on an actual person than it does not on a person)(sorry, I can't find the modeled photo online to link to!). I've also been aware that it's really not flattering for my face shape. And it's kind of a tough item to knit for someone else, because it's so silly-looking and therefore a very personal choice. But it's such an interesting pattern idea...

But then Nido opened. New LYS (actually, a fabric store with yarn, but the owner quickly discovered that there's a huge hungry market for a yarn shop in downtown Burlington), four blocks from my house. I've been popping in, checking up on her progress, giving suggestions now and then on what books to carry, etc. And the owner asked if I'd like to teach a class in the spring. Specifically, she wanted me to teach something that would use the Twinkle Soft Chunky she sells. My mind immediately went to the snail hat. It all clicked -- she loved the idea, and here we are!

So, I knit up a shop sample (pictured)(see? not flattering for my face shape). And my class is on the calendar. And it was super-quick -- although my instincts led me astray for a while, and I was stumped by Elizabeth's genius at first. But I got it all figured out (my usual advice to folks is to trust the pattern and go with it, and I didn't follow my own advice the first three times I started the hat! I was certain there was an error in Vogue's pattern. There wasn't.). And I'm about to bring it over to Nido so she can display it! Woo!

Now, let's hope people actually sign up for my classes. Time will tell -- one is late February, the other mid-March, so I won't know for a while.

NHM #9

2009-12-09T00:30:00.002-05:00

So my friend Aubrey and I went down to Mango's farm on Saturday to pick up our CSA share, and Mango saw us out the window and came running out: "Knitters! Knitters! Come inside and have some tea!" So we did. Then we spent a couple of hours sitting by the wood stove and knitting away. Then she showed us the baby chicks they'd just gotten the day before. (Having a friend with a farm is awesome! It's like having a friend with a swimming pool, only there are cute small animals!)

Well, while I was there, I did a bunch of work on this mitten, got about an inch or two past the thumb opening, and realized that the thumb was in the wrong place -- the gusset started way too soon, and the thumb opening was too low. Need extra rows! So I ripped back to the cuff, and then pouted, as I wasn't quite sure what to do.

Mango to the rescue! She ran upstairs, grabbed a book about Scandinavian knitting, and suddenly I had all kinds of options! I chose this leaf motif because the heart/flower-thingy pattern has leaves also, and this one happened to be a multiple-of-six pattern, which is handy when you've got 60 stitches.

Now the thumb is in the right place (but you can't see it, because I can't get that picture to post), and the mitten is still long enough in the hand. In fact, I did the decrease-y part of the fingers with size 2 needles rather than size 3s, just to cut down on a smidge of length. Cuff is also on size 2s, but most of the hand part is on 3s. All in all, it only took me about a day, maybe two, to knock this one out. Amazing how quickly a mitten knits up when you actually enjoy knitting it!

Mitts for Jamie

2009-11-28T13:59:00.002-05:00

I made mittens for my neighbor DSB, and quickly realized I needed to make something for his girlfriend Jamie, as well. They are sweethearts, and it's a little weird to give Ben "thank-you mittens" but not give Jamie something -- as they BOTH care for our cat when we're away. But I did need to come up with something fairly quickly, as I don't want to run into Christmas and have them feel obligated to give us a gift in return.

Fortunately, I found two balls of gorgeous-aubergine Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed in the sale bin at a LYS, and although I really like this yarn and wanted to make something for myself with it, I also knew that this was the perfect color and tweedy-delicious texture for fingerless mitts for Jamie. She's a hardcore gardener and actual florist (I would say her nascent floral business is "budding," but that's just too much), and fingerless mitts will be just the thing for keeping her hands and wrists a bit warmer while still being able to dig in the dirt.

Also, she has a pretty rockin' floaty-girly-layers personal style, and some sweet cabled mitts will fit in perfectly. So I found the free pattern Natalya on Ravelry, and cast-on Monday night... and finished on Wednesday. Perfect.

I plan to deliver both pairs of thank-you mittens today. The wind has picked up quite miserably, so I have no desire to leave the house, but fortunately, they just live around the corner. After I deliver them, I'll re-cozy-fy myself with a nice cup of hot chocolate, and figure out what I'm going to knit next.

Mittens for Ben, take two

2009-11-28T13:40:00.002-05:00

These are the mittens I made for my neighbor DSB. I used exactly one skein of Cascade 220, with no leftovers!

I improvised the pattern:

CO 60 sts on size 5 dpns, and double-knit in the round (look up double-knitting -- I'm not enough of an expert to explain it here, but it means you have two layers of knitted fabric) for a couple of inches.
Start increasing for thumb gusset -- first on the inside layer, and then on the outside -- and increase every other round (so, once inside, once outside, and then do a plain round once inside and once outside) until you have added 16 stitches to each layer.
Set thumb sts. aside and reconnect hand stitches to continue in the round.
Keep going until the hand is big enough to fit.
Um, decrease a few rows in there somewhere, and on your last round, do a full-on knit-purl-knit-purl to connect the two layers (so the inside layer won't come out when you pull your hand out of the mitten). I think I ended up with about 12 stitches at the end. It makes a pretty star at the top. Then run the end of the yarn through those last 12 stitches and pull tight. Weave in end.
Return thumb stitches to needles, knit the thumb until it's long enough, do a round of p2tog decreases on the inside layer, then a round of k2tog decreases on the outside layer. Do one row of kpkp like for the top of the mitten, then close off the top of the thumb. Weave in ends, and use the beginning-thumb tail to close up the hole between the thumb and the hand.

If desired, use remaining yarn to crochet a chain, and connect the chain to the wrist of each mitten. String through coat sleeves and pretend you are a four-year-old!

Watch out, because these took me a freakin' month to make. Double-knitting is soooooo sloooooowww.

Mittens for Ben

2009-11-28T13:02:00.001-05:00

(editor's note: I wrote this post a month ago, but was having technical difficulties... photos added to next post.)

Dear Sweet Ben (DSB) lives around the corner from me. He is NOT the same Ben who lives down the street, for whom I made a pair of Dashings last year (and no, I have never seen him wear them). DSB is an alumnus of my undergrad college in Iowa, and just happened to move here a year-and-some ago to go to grad school -- and we would have never known each other, except that another neighbor, a person in his grad department, connected us. He’s good-natured and kind, and just a very nice person. We try to be good neighbors to each other – sharing garden produce, the occasional houseplant/cat-sitting, I’ll give him a ride to school (or partway) if I see him out walking in the dead of winter, etc.

DSB got mild frostbite on his fingertips last winter, carrying his groceries home from the co-op without his gloves on. I promised him I’d make gloves, and even went so far as to ask him what color his coat is and buy the appropriate yarn (basic light gray Cascade 220), but then the weather warmed up and the need was not urgent. Now that the air is getting colder in that inevitable decline toward Real Winter, I need to make good on my promise. Also, when my grandmother died last month, DSB was totally willing to care for Doc at a moment’s notice. I’m also going to bake cookies. He deserves a big thank-you from the Holyknitter household. As does his girlfriend Jamie, who also rocks equally (even though she was out of town when Grandma died, so she wasn’t around to help with the cat this time – she has in the past)(I will probably make her mittens at some point, too, but haven't done any planning for that yet).

Anyway, DSB is getting a pair of double-knitted mittens (I'm using size 5s, so they'll be nice and dense as well as double-layered! No frostbite here!), complete with feeding-through-coat-sleeves string. It’s been a loooong time since I’ve done any double-knitting, so it’s taken me a while to get the hang of it. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with the thumb, as double-knitting one seems like it will be a pain. Then again, I do have to increase for a gusset anyway. We’ll see what I decide.

Don't you love how I leave you in such suspense at the end of my blog posts?

Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival 2009

2009-10-22T12:50:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, StrungUp, Meowkat, Mango, and I piled into Sweetea's environmentally-friendly hybrid car and drove down to Tunbridge, VT, for the Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival.

The day was gray, chilly, and sometimes rainy (boy am I glad I wore my raincoat!), but I enjoyed the trip regardless of the weather. For one thing, it was the first weekend in October, and the trees were amazing. I felt like my mother: "Children! Look out the window! The trees are orange, children! Look at the trees, they look like they're on fire! LOOK AT THE ORANGE TREES, CHILDREN!!!" Mom, I totally get it now, and although I still reserve the right to make fun of you, it comes from a place of love and truth and self-mocking, and not just from a place of rolling-my-eyes-at-my-mother.

Also, when you fill a car with knitters, we're all very quiet -- until the sun goes down and we can't see to knit anymore. Then we get talkative!

The festival itself was very different from last year. It felt a bit lackluster, although I think I do like the Tunbridge fairgrounds (facility/layout/setup) better than the Essex fairgrounds. There were quite a few shops that were missing, and the selection of wares just wasn't as good as I remember last year's being. There was a LOT of sock yarn. Most of it was more than $25 a skein. And since I (a) don't knit many socks, and (b) don't have much money these days, I really didn't find a lot of options that excited me.

I still made out like a bandit compared with my road companions, though. I found a kit for the Tulip Cardigan, which I'd been wanting for about two years. It was reasonably-priced and everything. (I wouldn't have bought it if it had cost way too much, but the price was exactly what I would have expected to pay, which meant I didn't have to spend five minutes agonizing over whether or not to spend $5 more than I thought it was really worth.) I also found some beautiful handspun-and-died llama yarn -- a bunch of mini-skeins, 30-40 yards apiece, in about a DK weight. Perfect for the Fiddlehead Mittens, which I've also been wanting to make for a while but have agonized about buying all that yarn just to use a tiny bit of each color (and the designer's kits, while gorgeous, are expensive; plus, I'm just not that much of an internet buyer).

Also, there was one lonely farmer there, selling delicious sheepsmilk cheese! Soooooo yummy.

I didn't buy anything that didn't have a designated purpose, which is unusual for me. I tend to be a buy-now-because-it's-pretty-and-figure-out-a-project-later kind of gal. Last year, I came home with all kinds of random items. This year, I was much more focused.

All in all, I did enjoy the Festival. I was bummed for my friends, a couple of whom didn't find anything they really loved enough to purchase, but we had a great time together. I also enjoyed running into the blogless VTHuskies and reconnecting with her. I even enjoyed standing in the rain, waiting for the very slow catering people to make me a lambburger. Mmmm...delicious lambburger. And I got to look at the beautiful Vermont countryside, all aflame with the reds, yellows, and oranges of Autumn in New England. LOOK AT THE TREES, CHILDREN! THEY ARE BRIGHT RED! CHILDREN, LOOK AT THEM! LOOK!!!

Photoless Update

2009-10-19T17:25:00.008-04:00

It has been toooooo long since I've updated! I have done a ton of knitting, it feels like, but have very little to show for it. Although I've done a ton of knitting, none of that knitting is actually done. Y'know?

Here's the basic role call of what's on the needles:
1. Annemor #16 (mittens): the hands are done, I just have to do the thumbs. Since I'm still not convinced I love the color combination, I'm giving myself a break for a while. I'm not ripping them out, though. There are enough people who *do* like that color combination that I think someone will want them. And since I am making them with the express purpose of giving them away eventually, that someone does not have to be me!

2. Minimalist Cardigan: I have knit and frogged the same darn sleeve three times! I am very worried about running out of yarn for this project, so keep re-doing the sleeve with a little less blousing -- and a little less, and a little less -- so as to have enough yarn to do the second sleeve. I've started on the second sleeve, but haven't finished the first yet, as I would like to make them even, at least, and if it turns out that I do have enough yarn to lengthen them past the as-written 3/4 length, I would like to do that, too.

3. Mittens for my neighbor Ben. This item gets its own blog post.

Also! Two weeks ago was the Vermont Sheep and Wool festival, now moved to Tunbridge, VT, rather than the oh-so-convenient-for-me (and it's all about me, right?) Essex Junction. I'll write another post on that.

And yesterday, Mango hosted yet another stash swap. Since I haven't purchased any new yarn since the last swap (hard to believe, but completely true!), I didn't have much to offer that was any good. But I did bring an apple pie pie, and it was yummy!

I've done a bit of a technology upgrade (i.e., I got a BlackBerry), but haven't yet figured out how to get my pictures from my BB to my computer. Or, rather, I haven't taken the time to figure out how to make them talk to one another. Funny how fall is a ridiculously busy time for a clergy person. Particulary one who doesn't have a secretary. Sigh -- one of these days. Meanwhile, I can write a post, but I can't put up photos yet. Soon. Things will get less crazy soon.

I hope.

Annemor #16

2009-09-07T19:21:00.001-04:00

I had another trip at the end of August, a couple of days at my denomination's headquarters for a meeting. I boarded Plane #1 with Selbuvotter mitten makings in my bag: needles, pattern, unknown-brand variegated CC yarn (from the stash swap: I think it was Sweetea's?), and a skein of Blue Sky Alpaca's Alpaca & Silk, still in hank form. Fortunately, I had an empty seat next to me...

The flight attendant was completely fascinated by my yarn-balling activity mid-flight. She stopped and asked me what in the world I was doing. "Making a mitten," I responded. Of course! What else could I possibly be doing?

Anyway, by the end of Flight #1, I was almost satisfied with the length of the cuff. On Flight #2, I ended up sitting next to a colleague going to the same meeting, and he was thoroughly impressed with what I was doing ("You're using two different colors at once? Wow, you've got mad skillz. I don't think I know anyone who can do that." Um, you'd be surprised, friend.) and even brought it up two days later during the business meeting.

Once I got into the actual knitting of the pattern, I couldn't decide if I like the two yarns together or not. I'll keep going, I've only done about 8 rows of the pattern anyway, haven't even gotten to the thumb. But... the main color is kind of a weird wheat-yellow/celery-green, depending on the light (it looked really weird in the airplane light, above the clouds), and I'm not sure it's a pretty combination. We'll see. Since I've got so many projects in progress right now, it will probably be a while before I do any more significant work on this one.

Three BSJs in One Week...

2009-09-04T10:51:00.002-04:00

...AAAA-hahahahahaha! Yeah, that didn't work so much.

Husband and I took a long road trip the first two weeks of August. And when I say "long road trip," I don't mean New-England-long, wherein driving for three hours is "SOOO FAAAARRRRR!" No, when we take road trips, we take road trips. 2,800+ miles in thirteen days. VT-NYC-DC-ATL-DC-VT. A real road trip.

We stopped in DC twice, on the way down for several days to visit Knitting Queen and several college friends who live in the DC area, and then again on the way up because some of those same friends were having a housewarming party and it was a good chance to see even more people I haven't seen since college. And, of course, since we're all at that almost-thirty time in life, everybody's having babies. Three different couples in DC are currently pregnant or have just given birth. In fact, one of those three couples had their baby during the week of our trip.

Three babies = three Baby Surprise Jackets.

I thought it was an ambitious-but-possibly-reasonable goal to work towards making all three BSJs during the first week of our trip. And, y'know, if I didn't get one of them done in the first week, I could definitely work on it while we were in Atlanta, and then do the gifting on our way back home. Right? Right.

Right.

First BSJ (the red one) took three separate cast-on attempts, which was most of our drive through the Adirondacks. That's almost six hours right there. Of just casting on. I didn't knit in NYC nearly as much as I thought I would, and the ball of 220 Superwash got really tangled in my purse and took nearly a day to untangle and re-roll.

(I did have an enjoyable subway moment, when the two young women sitting across from me in the subway car eyed me with envy as I was knitting, and then turned their conversation to dreams of what they'd like to knit someday -- if they ever actually bothered to pick up the needles. It was quite a hilarious situation, but contributed significantly to a need-t0-unknit-a-few-rows moment, which then started the oh-crap-what-a-tangled-mess phenomenon. That's what I get for gloating.)

I finally made some good progress on the red BSJ as we drove down the Garden State Parkway to DC/Baltimore. Finished it in DC, except for the sewing-the-shoulder-seams, and promptly lost it under stuff in the back seat of the car.

The second (blue) BSJ, I cast on somewhere between DC and Durham, NC, where we spent the night with some other college friends. I did much of the casting-on and knitting-up so much better the second time around... except that I accidentally cast on 155 stitches rather than 160, and didn't realize it until I was halfway through. I was NOT frogging several days worth of my work at this point (there was still one more BSJ to go, remember!), so I just reworked the math and kept going. But the extra math meant extra thinking for every row (wait, do I increase here, or do I increase there? How many stitches am I supposed to have on each side of the marker? How big should I make that middle section whose stitches I pick up later? ARGH).

I did not finish the blue BSJ by the time we got back up to DC on the homeward stretch of our journey. I didn't even finish it by the time we got back to Vermont, because I insisted on driving the whole way from Philadelphia to Burlington (at some point, my need to be in control of the car trumped my desire to finish the darn sweater). I finished the blue BSJ about ten days after we got home, because I wanted the needles so I could get started on the sleeve of the Minimalist Cardigan -- the night before I was taking off on my next trip. I finished the knitting, but not the shoulder seams, about 1 a.m. With a 6 a.m. flight the next day. Sigh.

One more BSJ to go. I kind of can't handle it right now, though, and want to finish my Minimalist Cardigan first. Looks like I'll need to knit the third (green) one on size 8s rather than on7s, and send that one to the biggest baby of the three.

BTW, on size 7s, one BSJ takes about a ball and a half of Cascade 220 Superwash. At some point, I'll likely make a stripey fourth BSJ out of the remainders. In spite of all the pressure I put on myself to do a bunch of the same sweater again and again (which could easily lead to me hating the pattern), I still adore the BSJ and will probably make a zillion more over the course of my lifetime.

End-of-Summer Update

2009-08-31T13:23:00.004-04:00

I have been knitting a ton this summer. I have not been blogging equally as much. The real obstacle to blogging has been putting down the needles long enough to take pictures! Um, that and all the actual working I have done. My job really cuts into my blogging time. Funny how that works.

It has seriously been a "Startitis Summer." And I'm okay with that. Now that I have a moment to breathe (and to blog), here's a bit of an update:

Minimalist Cardigan is 70% done. The back and both fronts are done. First sleeve is started, just barely. I only have one skein left of the Lamb's Pride. Will I have enough to finish two sleeves? Stay tuned.

I have not worked on the Kiki Mariko Rug at all. It's huge and heavy, and I needed something lighter that I could carry with me in my gadding-about.

I really did quite a bit of traveling this summer, more than I have in the past, and it looks like the trend is likely to continue and I will become a prolific airplane knitter when I'm not using that time to do some undisturbed church-calendar planning.

Started on another pair of stranded mittens -- that's another post for another day. We also went on a two-week road trip, wherein I attempted to make three BSJs in one week, and failed miserably. That's also for another post. The point of this post, really, is to let you know that I am alive and well and knitting away... I'm just not writing much about it, but will pick that piece up again soon.

Taking Stock

2009-07-10T12:16:00.005-04:00

Two years ago, I went to my denomination's big national meeting. And I got a job and a sweater out of the deal.

This year, I went back (it only happens every two years) as a delegate from Vermont, which sounds very important. (And it is very important, but it mostly means that I have a 6:30 a.m. meeting every day, and a voting card.) And I was extremely busy. So busy, I didn't have time to go check out City Knitting, the yarn shop in Grand Rapids that I wanted to visit. But JerseyKnitter went!

Thankfully, I'd brought yarn. Stash yarn, in fact. A very deep navy "Bulldog Blue" from Brown Sheep (Lamb's Pride Worsted). I'm working on the Minimalist Cardigan (Rav link). I got the whole back done while I was sitting in meetings, but then discovered on the airplane home that I'd missed some decreases for the underarms -- so I had to frog 7 inches and pick up the stitches to do the decreases. Argh.

Anyway, here's me blissfully knitting away in a business meeting. More pics of the sweater later. I've now got one half of the right front panel finished, as well.

NHM #1

2009-07-02T01:59:00.000-04:00

I did it again! Another pair of mittens. These are NHM #1 [Rav link] from Selbuvotter. Took me a little over a week -- got a massive sunburn in the middle of the process, when I brought my sunscreen with me to World Wide Knit in Public Day at the park, but then didn't actually put on any. Awesome.

Main Color is Blue Sky Alpaca&Silk in Blush (veeeeery subtle pink), Contrast Color is Jojoland Melody (veeeery slight color-changing red -- there's green in one mitten and purple in the other).

I knit this up on 4s, thinking they were 3s. I discovered this mistake when I was at a friend's house for a quiet evening of knitting and realized that I'd been trying to make the thumb on short 5s, and it wasn't going so well. I reached in my bag and grabbed the long "3s" I'd used on the main part of the hand, and that's when I realized I'd done everything in 4s. (The Jojoland doesn't like 4s very well. Or 5s, for that matter. I wouldn't recommend trying it.)

At least I got to borrow her Knitpicks Harmony DPNs, which I'd been wanting to try. (Lovely, but I'm not going out of my way to invest -- my Brittany's work just fine.) They did the job, and I could definitely see the difference between 3s and 4s.

Kiki Mariko

2009-06-29T01:25:00.006-04:00

I don't quite know how it happened. I think I must have been putting myself to sleep -- I often fall asleep thinking about future knitting projects; it's much more conducive to relaxing than thinking about work -- and I decided that what our house really needs is the Kiki Mariko rug [Rav link], in the same wacky colors as we've painted the walls. Bright yellow, bright orange, bright red. Like I said, I'm not quite sure how the idea crawled its way into my head... but it made itself at home there. It may have had something to do with the fact that the house is coooooold in the winter, and a cozy wool rug may be something of a solution.

I already had two skeins of Lamb's Pride Bulky in creme from the swap, and a partial of an orange that I eventually decided was the wrong orange (ain't that always the way?), so I hied myself to Kaleidoscope to figure out what to do with this hankering to knit a ridiculously-colored fair-isle rug for my living room.

What I got did end up matching the walls perfectly, which makes me wonder: why the heck did I pick those crazy colors for my house? I like them a lot! I love my crazy-colored house! My yellow room makes me so happy! My red room is so cozy and comforting! My orange room... well, the orange looks really awesome with the red and the yellow, and I normally detest orange, but not in this case. And I do spend most of my time there, I'd say. But together? In the living room? (that's the orange one) This rug may end up being too much.

Actually, if it's horrible, or a bad size, Kiki will live in the yellow room, which is my office. There, the rug will be slightly less in the full-on pattern of traffic (and public eye), but still serve the warmth function quite nicely. I will be very appreciative on freezing February nights when I'm up writing my sermon.

I do kind of wish I'd forgone the black, or chosen brown instead -- I really had myself convinced that I needed another neutral, but now I'm not so sure it was necessary. The truth will reveal itself in the final product, after it's felted. I don't dislike it so much that I want to take the trouble of undoing all my work.

Anyway, after just a month of knitting (and the labyrinth rug has been a couple of years and I'm only halfway!) I'm pretty close to where I want to be. I think I want to knit the tube about 7' long, and I've probably got about 5' now. (My hope is that the length will be around 5 1/2 feet when its felted.) It's been a satisfyingly quick TV-knitting project, good for the end of a long day. And great for getting used to stranded knitting. I've really gotten the hang of the tension in my left hand, and my speed with two colors is almost what it is with just one. All in all, I'm feeling pretty proud of myself with this one.

Not an Accident This Time

2009-06-11T11:44:00.005-04:00

I made mittens! On purpose!

These are from Selbuvotter again -- I am loving this book, and may very well make everything in it! I really prefer the corrugated rib cuff though, so I'm sticking with that rather than the silly regular-rib cuffs in the book.

Both yarns are Frog Tree Alpaca sport weight. I love this yarn in skein form and in fabric form, but I'm not such a huge fan of it for mittens, I've decided. Too much halo, the fibers get knit together and the pattern gets kind of muddied (on the inside of the hand, especially). Still, I am happy with the final result.

And they're a gift anyway (as are many of the mittens I'll be making in the upcoming months), a surprise for a friend, so that's all I'm gonna say about that now. Next winter I can do the big reveal.

Also, I'm definitely getting the hang of stranded knitting now, and loving it. Just enough challenge that it's interesting, but not hard enough that it's discouraging.

Elephant!

2009-05-18T13:54:00.002-04:00

While I was in Texas this past March, my sister was in...India. With husband and baby. That's right, she took a four-month-old baby to India. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. I didn't set foot on an airplane until I was fifteen years old. Can I be jealous of my nephew for being more well-traveled than I am? Is that okay?

They went to an elephant sanctuary and had a great time. I assume that Nephew slept through it all; he certainly won't remember any of it later. So I knitted him an elephant (Rav link), another one of the patterns in Zoe Mellor's Knitted Toys.

I love the projects in this book so much, but the patterns are so badly written. So much unnecessary seaming! It's infuriating! Not that I plan to knit another elephant, but I've been trying to figure out how to improve the process of this pattern -- what can be done in the round, etc. So dumb. But I digress...

I used Colinette Cadenza again, the same yarn I used for both toy bears I made last year. A great yarn for baby toys, soft and washable, and also good quality. I used the "Jewel" colorway for the elephant, because the colors made me think of the flash and color and beauty of India (not that I've seen them myself). And although I looked at this colorway on the shelf a zillion times and thought, "goodness, that's some ugly yarn! Who in the world would want those colors together?" when I decided to make this pattern, I knew that was the exact right colorway for this particular elephant.

I did manage to do a three-needle bind-off for the two gusset pieces (can I just say, how unhelpful is it to call the belly of the elephant a "gusset?" Legs, body, trunk...gusset? That is not a body part! Dumb!!! It's the underside of the elephant, the belly!!! GRRR!!!), so didn't have to get out the tapestry needle for that one. Then I blocked all the pieces -- and I must admit, I didn't know the Hot-Iron-On-Wet-Washcloth Blocking Trick before doing this pattern, and I love it and will forever be grateful to Zoe Mellor and her terrible pattern-writing for teaching me this technique -- and set about the stupidly time-consuming task of sewing them all together.

Seriously, it took me as much time to do the sewing as it took to do the knitting. Eye roll. The entire car ride to their house, then two nights on the couch... I had to give Nephew the not-quite-finished elephant before bed in order to get pictures of him playing with it (he liked it, I'm glad to say!), and then had to stay up until the wee hours of the morning before our departure to get all the seaming and stuffing done. Hence the terribly-lit late-night photo above.Still, I'm happy with the finished product, even if the process left something to be desired. Also, my nephew is so beautiful! He's slightly over six months in this picture (and today is his 7-month birthday).

Intrepid Reporter

2009-05-15T13:31:00.001-04:00

Last month (Palm Sunday, in fact), about ten of us gathered at my friend Mango's house for a yarn swap. It was a fun swap -- all good folks, all with good quality yarn to swap. We ate a light appetizer-y dinner and drank just enough wine that our eyesight and judgment were questionable, which makes the swap that much more interesting. And then we got down to the serious business that is The Yarn Swap.

There was so much yarn there that it wouldn't all fit in one picture (or two, for that matter, but I'm self-editing for the moment):

I was Baa Baa Black Sheep: I brought three bags full! And I came home with three bags full, as well (including a bag of sock yarn to give to a semi-homebound church member who knits socks for charity) -- half new-to-me, half the stuff I'd brought in the first place. Pretty successful, I'd say.

So much fun. And swapping definitely curbed the impulse to purchase more yarn for a while! I even got some yarn for which I have definite plans... something I rarely do when I go to a real live yarn store. Thanks for a great evening, Mango and friends!

Mother's Day -- on my schedule, not the world's

2009-05-11T13:03:00.010-04:00

I've inherited many things from my mother: her laugh (which my brother and I used to make fun of when I was little, so there's a little poetic justice for you!), her eyebrows (tho' I groom mine more heavily than she does hers), her ability to spend an entire day sitting in front of the computer without actually accomplishing anything but thoroughly enjoying herself in the process, her tendency towards optimism -- which leads to a tendency to bite off more than we can chew (witness: our choice of houses, with accompanying "projects" and "yardwork" that will never be completed) -- which leads to a wonderfully cheerful attitude toward accepting one's own limits and imperfections. I think she's great, and I am so honored every time someone says I am like her.

One of the other things I inherited from my mother was her inability to get anything in the mail in a timely manner. For example, her birthday was two months ago, and although I have knitted several items to send her AND I fully intended to give back that book she lent me in October so we could discuss it when I read it (which I did: I'm not a complete reprobate!) AND I wrote her a card that I know is really sweet but it's been so long that I've forgotten what I said in it... all the items I've been meaning to mail her are sitting in a box in my living room totally ready to walk with me the two blocks to the post office. It's a walk I make nearly every day, because the post office is on the way to everywhere else I could possibly want to go in this town. And yet, there's the box, still at my house. And postage rates went up today. I'm so organized (another thing I inherited from her.)

So here you go, Mom: a picture of me wearing the scarf I made you (and didn't tell you about! I was trying to surprise you!) when I was in Texas in March. I post silly-looking pictures of myself on the internet, just for you. Happy Mother's Day, a day late.

The progress shots and specs:
Tilli Tomas "Milan" silk/wool yarn, one full skein, Napoleon Lace Scarf by Kaleidoscope Yarns (a freebie yarn and pattern from a giveaway/sale thingy last year).

Also, many thanks to Sweetea, whose blocking wires I have been holding hostage for a shamefully long time. Again with the organization.

Even Mother Nature Needs to Frog Sometimes

2009-04-25T23:03:00.007-04:00

When we bought our current house, this was our front yard. The first pictures we ever saw of the house had huge vines growing up the front porch and into its roof (yeah, a problem, we know), but by the time we actually looked at the house, some smart person with a vested interest in selling had cut down the vines… leaving this pathetic and gnarly stump.

Last summer, the stump sprouted anew. I did not really have the energy to deal with it, except to cut the new baby vines and the branches that were small enough for my handheld garden clippers, and spray the darn thing with Roundup on a semi-regular basis until it stopped creating new shoots and tendrils.

Why is the poisoned stump in my front yard a subject for a knitting-and-sometimes-spirituality blog? Because today was the day I tackled the stump. And somewhere in the six hours it took me to remove the damn thing entirely, I had a knitting-and-spirituality-related revelation. So here goes.

It was a really beautiful day today. Amazingly so. After a sometimes-record-cold winter and a very unusually chilly and therefore protracted spring, today was a day when you could actually have hope that summer might come. I never saw a thermometer or a weather report, but there were rumors of temps in the 80s. A gorgeous, sunny day -- objectively "nice" weather, but also particularly nourishing for the spirit. I had planned to spend the day faithfully writing a sermon and doing other dutiful work things, but… that stump was calling to me, mocking me, daring me to ignore it for one more week (and watch, it’ll rain every Saturday for the next month and the darn thing will come back to life). And I just couldn’t let that stump tease me like that. After a quick trip to the hardware store, I was ready. Shovel: check. Hacksaw: check. Axe: okay, I didn’t buy an axe, and I probably should have, but the claw-side of a hammer ended up working almost as well in the end. Pretty green flower pot: check. I needed $5 more in my purchase total in order to use my $5 off coupon. That flower pot was free, dammit.

Back to the stump. I began shortly after 2:00 p.m. I dug and dug and dug, trying to get under the left-hand side of the stump, pulling up and sawing off as much of the root system as I could access. By 4:30 or so, I’d gotten this far:

Pretty respectable, I'd say. That pile of cut-off stump pieces is almost as big as the remaining stump, so that's some decent work there. I was feeling motivated, like I'd actually made some progress and I was going to use that momentum to do Great Things!

It was the next part, though, that brought my great revelation.

This second photo is from 6:30ish. I'd hacked away considerably at the stump and gotten to a corm-like structure -- not a solid piece of wood, but a giant snarl of branches that had wound around one another and grown together. And that's when I realized... I was untangling Mother Nature's mistake. I was picking apart a giant wooden knot. I was frogging.

I think that a part of me had been feeling guilty for pulling up and killing this living thing that is, in all probability, older than I am. That's part of why I avoided dealing with it last summer, and part of why I felt the need to dedicate a huge chunk of time all at once -- rather than kill it in pieces, I needed to kill it swiftly and justly. In spite of all the Roundupping I'd done last year, this venerable bush was still trying to send up little shoots again today. It was really hanging on. And I couldn't just cut up part of it and leave the base still struggling to live in my front yard. Once I saw that I wasn't really destroying so much as frogging, my task became so much easier to accept. Just like with frogging a knitted item that doesn't work, I was frogging this tangle of limbs so that something could grow in this space again.

Turns out, that final chunk took me nearly an hour to break open, but only about 10 minutes to disassemble once I figured out how to take it apart. It was almost a double-helix structure at its heart, spiraled around and around itself. I think Norah Gaughan would have appreciated its simplicity. There were some stubborn roots that just wouldn't give up (and a couple big'uns running under the porch, so I couldn't access them), but I managed to extract a lot of the root system before deciding it was time to let go and fill in the hole.

Right when the sun was headed down behind the trees at the end of the street (8ish), I managed to set the edging of my new flower bed, spread the dirt evenly, and plant some seeds. There will be sunflowers, marigolds, and "an assortment of wildflowers" poking their little noses up before long.Ain't creation grand?

Henry II

2009-04-11T13:41:00.004-04:00

I'm 75% done with Henry.

I know that because I have four skeins of this cashmere, and I've used three of them. I keep hoping to find a fifth skein hiding somewhere, but I've been through my entire stash in the last week doing some It's-the-End-of-Lent-and-I-Will-Do-Anything-but-Prepare-for-Holy-Week procrastination (ahem! like this post), and I didn't find any more, so that must be it.

Still, I'm quite happy with what I've got so far. I think the scarf is a good width -- I have no idea about the length, since it's scrunched up on the needles and won't be un-scrunched until it's bound off -- and I'll be happy with the final product.

I have really enjoyed working on this pattern. It's a bit tricky to get the hang of it, and for the first 5 or so rows I was really trusting that the instructions were well-written, because I didn't get it at all.

But then it clicked. And I've been speeding along. This was another case where the comments on Ravelry had me a little bit psyched out -- everyone talked about how it was so hard, and I couldn't find anything positive at all! -- but they also all agreed that it was worth it in the end. And really, this yarn was screaming out to be the Henry scarf, so I couldn't ignore that.

The texture shows up nicely on both sides of the fabric, which I really like. In the picture at right, you can see both sides -- the underside is on the left half of the picture, and the "right side" is in the right half. I like that the herringbone "weave" is so subtle, you really have to step back and let your eyes kind of blur to see it. Nice.

I got brave and started taking out the provisional cast-on a week ago or so. It takes time to remove, so I'm doing little bits at a time (that takes self-control! I really just want to spend two hours picking it out!) The cast-on really doesn't unravel, just like the designer promised! I, like everyone else who's made Henry, was nervous about that... but it's fine. And such a cool fringe on the edge.

As I've been working on this scarf, I keep thinking it might be cool to take up weaving. I know some women here who are big in the Weaver's Guild, so it'd be easy to get connected and take some lessons... but do I really need another hobby? One with, um, actual machinery? No. No, I do not. And I don't think I could love weaving like I love knitting -- not for the same reasons, anyway. I can see myself stressing far more about weaving, which is also something I do not need.

I think it's the spell of Henry. Maybe I just need to knit more things that look woven. That is, after all, what I like about this piece.

Doc just likes it as a pillow for his window seat.

And LOOK! Henry grew a tail!!!

Happy Easter, everybody.

Quick Sock Update

2009-03-31T01:06:00.004-04:00

I finished the Ugliest Socks Ever! And I'm trying to convince myself that they're really not so ugly after all. I hope the recipient of these socks (who isn't Husband) won't think they're ugly, or at least won't tell me if he/she does.

But they are too big for my foot, that's for sure. You can't really see it in this photo (and I'm not going to take another one!), but there's at least an inch more sock-toe than actual toe in there. Whoops!

Yes, this was one of my travel knitting projects. More travel knitting updates to come... but no photos, because what happens in Texas stays in Texas (or, at least, doesn't get posted on the internets.)(You put nine women in a beach house on a rainy weekend, and there's not much to take photos of anyway. We mostly just sat around.)

Holyknitter on Vacation

2009-03-09T16:00:00.001-04:00

I'm away for a week, visiting some girlfriends and playing on the beach when it's not raining, and possibly doing a bit of yarn tourism. I'm bringing several knitting projects (a whole week with no sermon to write! I can get so much knitting done!), some of which are surprises. Hooray for surprises!

I'll be back to posting sometime later next week. Peace, yo.

Henry the Scarf

2009-03-09T11:59:00.005-04:00

This is Henry. Henry's a scarf that's knit lengthwise, and has a beautiful herringbone slip-stitch pattern that looks complicated and difficult but really isn't. Henry's 450-some stitches long, and that's a lot of stitches to cram onto my little size 3 circulars. One row takes for-ev-er to knit: I got almost two rows done in two hours of knitting group the other day. OY.

The yarn I'm using is special. It's Knit One Crochet Too's now-discontinued Richesse et Soie, a 65/35 cashmere-silk blend that is pretty much too sumptuous for words. I've had it stashed for years -- bought four balls of it one-by-one from a yarn shop near the school where I worked in Georgia. I've been holding on to them, wondering what to do with them, wondering if I'd just keep this gorgeous yarn just to have it, until Knitty posted Henry and I just knew that a herringbone scarf is what this yarn wants to be. Is it for me? Is it for Husband? I haven't decided yet. We'll probably steal it back and forth from one another.

Since it's apparently going to take me forever to make this baby anyway, I guess we'll just cross that bridge when we come to it. I've got some plane rides in my near future, and Henry is still perfectly purse-sized, so he'll be my carry-on companion.

In case you're confused by the photo: the scarf itself is gray, the provisional cast-on is with leftover sock yarn, hence the blue. It's not a part of the finished product.

Labyrinth Rug Update II

2009-02-27T12:26:00.003-05:00

This is why you get "before" pictures. I frequently forget the "before" picture, and I'm glad I remembered here. This is my Labyrinth Rug wayyyyyy back forever ago. My original blog post is from February 2008, and I claimed that I'd been working on it for months (that seems laughable to me now). I do remember driving up to Vermont from Georgia with the basket o' green yarn in the trunk of my car, so it has been at least fifteen months since I started -- eighteen or twenty, probably.

And this is the rug in early September.

I've pretty much ignored the mounting pile of green yarn next to my living room chair since then, but... well, like I said, I'm "between projects." And, of course, being "between projects" when it's Oscar time and the President's giving a not-quite-State-of-the-Union speech... well, that's what the Labyrinth Rug is for.

And I decided that, for the first time ever, really, I probably ought to measure this baby to see how far I've gotten. Up until now, I've kind of been guessing about my progress. So I got out the old sheepie measuring tape and learned that the tape itself is five feet long. (I've never bothered to pull it out all the way! I figure, if a project is big enough that you've got to measure it in feet, it's probably something you should just be estimating anyway. A blanket's a blanket, right?)

Anyway, I spread the tape on the floor and the rug beside it in lengths, and learned that it's a whopping thirty feet long! And, um, ten+ of that I've done in the past four days or so.

I marked the 30-foot point and added about two more while watching the Daily Show. Now I'll have a better visible gauge of my progress than trying to make Kitty stand next to the rug every time I want to take a photo of it. The safety pin is far less likely to get up and walk away while I'm lining up the shot.

Also, I'm getting to the point where I'm using up some of the smaller skeins of yarn. Since I'm only halfway through, I may need to reconsider some of my pacing. Then again, the point of this rug is to use the scraps, so I'm not going to sweat it. I'm only about halfway through the skein of Lamb's Pride Worsted I bought just for this project, so I'm okay with that.

I'm not entirely sure that I'm okay with going another eighteen or twenty months on this project. (A math problem: if I'm halfway through the knitting at thirty feet, and it took me twenty months to get there, what is the probability that I will poke my own eyes out before I finish this rug. And not for not liking it. I still like this rug, even after twenty months of knitting and only half a rug to show for it.) What I'm saying is, I may need to step it up a bit.

Into the Frogpile with you!

2009-02-25T00:20:00.000-05:00

This is Thorpe (Ravelry link), a pretty stranded hat. I wanted to make it for Husband. I must have cast on for this baby five different times. When I finally got my fingers to follow the pattern, the hat was wayyyyy too small to fit on my head, much less Husband's -- but I was totally getting gauge! I do not understand.

There was so much about this project that wasn't coming together anyway: I didn't have any bulky yarn I liked handy, so was doubling worsted for both colors. I couldn't find all my size 9 needles, so was making do with two DPNs and a circular. I had to concentrate on the increases far more than was fun.

The icing on the cake: by the time I got enough of the hat done to see whether or not it was going to fit, etc., I decided the colors looked ugly anyway. FROG.

Yarn: Peace Fleece worsted (the oatmeal color - I forget the name of the colorway), Bartlett Yarns unlabeled worsted (the orange/creamsicle color) (this was a gift, I think, or a quick sale -- hence no label).

Accidents Happen

2009-02-19T12:34:00.002-05:00

So, Husband and I were supposed to go to Boston this past weekend, but Sister called on Sunday after church to say "I'm sick. Nephew's sick. Don't come."

So suddenly we had a free two days that we weren't anticipating. We were bummed, because we really want to see Nephew, but we didn't want to be a burden on Sister and didn't want to risk spreading the germs anyway. So we stayed home.

I'd planned to go to my Sunday afternoon knitting group, but took a nap that went a wee bit too long, and just couldn't motivate myself to get out of the house. Besides, the knitting that was tugging at me was something I've been wanting to learn for a while -- and not something I wanted to learn while sitting in a coffee shop with my 4-12 closest knitting buddies. You know what I mean. I love you gals and all, but learning something new requires a kind of focus I'm just not going to achieve in that space.

I'd looked it up on Ravelry, this thing I wanted to learn. I've seen a few mittens lately with a beautiful vertical-stripey cuff, and (a) had no idea how to do it, and (b) had no idea what it's called, so didn't really know how to ask. Turns out, it's called the Corrugated Cuff, and someone who claims to be an expert says it's a traditional Norwegian thing -- although, Selbuvotter doesn't mention the Corrugated Cuff or show any pictures of it at all. That kind of has me wondering.

Let me back up a minute here. Selbuvotter is, in the words of author Terri Shea, "a research project that [she] accidentally over-achieved." Really, it's a book about Norwegian mittens, particularly from the region/town of Selbu, and the economy that was built on the backs of the women who knit these particular mittens. And then it has a ton of patterns!

Anyway, I bought this book in the KnitPicks book sale, read the whole thing on the airplane to DC two weeks ago, and decided that a stranded mitten project was just the thing for my personal Lenten Discipline. (The book in the photo above is Mason-Dixon Knitting's second book: really good section/instructions on beginning Fair Isle technique.)

Lent is the six-week period leading up to Easter. Traditionally, it's a time when Christians give up something they like (maybe a bit too much) -- something like chocolate, or red meat -- something that is perhaps a bit of an indulgence anyway. It's a good time to think about what's really important in our lives, why we make the choices we make, etc. It's a time where we focus on self-discipline.

And, in the self-discipline mode, there has been a newer movement in the last, ohhhh, maybe 10-20 years? that suggests we take on a discipline for Lent rather than give up something. In years past, I've carried around a bottle of water and been very intentional about drinking a certain amount every day -- normally, I forget to drink water, and generally tend to ignore my body and its legitimate basic needs (sleep, food, water). For several years, Lent was a time when I'd focus on my physical well-being through simply making sure I wasn't dehydrated.

Well, I'm totally still dehydrated. But I needed something new for Lent this year, and I figured that a knitting goal to learn something new would be just about right. I've known theoretically how to do stranded knitting for several years -- but knowing theoretically how to do something and actually doing it are two different things. This year is the year I actually do a stranded project, dammit!

I like the Corrugated Cuff, I wanted to learn how to do it, and yeah, Lent is still ten days away or so (it begins on Ash Wednesday, which is February 25 this year), but I'm between projects and kind of chomping at the bit on this thing, so I figured I'd just learn how to do the cuff. That would take a while, right? And meanwhile I could think about what other project(s) I'd like to do.

Weeeeell, it turns out that figuring out the cuff was easier than I thought. Looking it up on Ravelry helped, of course, but I thought I might have a harder time than I did. I cast on 54 stitches, knit one solid round, and began a k2, p1 rib (on a corrugated cuff, you knit with the main color and purl with the contrasting color -- a very cool effect). The next thing I knew, I'd made a good 2.5 inches or so, had gotten the hang of it, and was ready to move on. Out comes Selbuvotter!

I figured that, since this is my first stranded project, I'd try one of the simpler, symmetrical patterns -- one I liked enough to wear, but not so much that I'd be heartbroken if my tension was all off and it looked funny. I settled on Annemor #2, figured out how to fudge some of the math (the pattern calls for a ribbed cuff of 40 stitches -- I started with 54!), and found an America's Next Top Model marathon on TV. In other words, I settled in.

Um, the mitten didn't quite take as long as I thought it might. I did modify the thumb-hole a tiny bit, in that I did a tubular cast-on rather than a backwards loop cast-on for the top stitches. (That way I could alternate the colors and carry both strands more evenly.) Husband made dinner, I knit. I got to the decrease-for-fingertip part and went to bed -- at a reasonable hour, even!

Monday, we got up and I finished the fingertip. Then I talked Husband into accompanying me to a local coffee shop, where I proceeded to cast on for the second mitten. Five hours later, I'd finished that fingertip, too. We went home, we ate dinner, I knit a thumb, we went to bed.

Tuesday after work, I finished the second thumb and wove in the ends. I... accidentally made a pair of mittens. And accidentally did my Lenten knitting project before Lent started. Whoops!

So I guess now I have to figure out what my Lenten Discipline is going to be. Hmmm.

(Yarn is Blue Sky's Alpaca Silk; size 4 needles. I used almost a whole skein each of the gray and the white -- I only had one skein of white, but two of the gray, which is why I made gray the main color. Just in case I ran out of that first, you know. I'm kind of amazed at how little yarn these mittens used, really. Or how much yardage comes in a single skein of Alpaca Silk.)

Not perfect, but pretty anyway!

And now, a picture of sheep.

2009-02-16T10:00:00.000-05:00

Since I'm between projects, I thought I'd just show you all a picture of sheep and be done with it for a little while. These sheep are being herded by a team of dogs during the Scottish Festival in Stone Mountain, GA. Must be 2007? Something like that. It looks like they are running straight towards me -- and, well, they are -- but they will soon turn because the dogs will make them. I did not get trampled by sheep.

Spotted!

2009-02-14T21:51:00.001-05:00

My friend Samantha managed to take pictures of me wearing multiple Finished Objects at once: Tangled Yoke Cardigan, and Flurries Hat and Mittens. Perhaps she should win a prize. How's "undying love and affection" for you, Sam? Or maybe continued invitations to Friday Night at My House? I'm hoping that will be acceptable, 'cause I ain't got much else to give right now.

Yes, the Flurries Hat is done. The 126 stitches of the lining was exactly right, and my original math of 98 stitches for the Flurries was right-on despite the earlier math difficulties with the Cashsoft, so I have no idea what I was thinking. I love that it's a little bit cloche-like, and also that the pink of the lining peeks out next to my face. It peeks out from the cuffs of the mittens, too.
I knit the lining all the way up to where I'd need to start decreasing, so the hat is super-thick and -warm. Hooray! You can kind of see the "ridge" where the lining ends in this photo that Samantha took -->

After she left, I tried to take more pictures of the hat myself. Most of these attempts were rather unsuccessful, like this one:

(who am I kidding? That's one of the good unsuccessful attempts!) But eventually I did get it right.

Anyway, I'm officially "between projects" right now... which actually means that I am only working on the Ugliest Socks Ever and the Labyrinth Rug, neither of which are seeing much progress at the moment.

Taking a Mulligan

2009-02-11T18:00:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to make the lining for the hat that will match these mittens.

I went to DC last week to visit some friends and take a little mini-break. Through a perfectly normal series of plane-delay happenings -- which seemed rather surreal due to a significant lack of sleep the night before -- I managed to get stuck in Kennedy airport during the first half of the Superbowl. And what else can you do when you're stuck in an airport during the Superbowl but sidle up to the bar, order dinner and a large Cosmo, and watch the game and halftime show?

Oh, yeah. You can cast on for a hat, too.

Now, I did my math well. I did my math sober and after a good night of sleep, even. And I double-checked that-there gauge. I was supposed to cast on 140 stitches of this Cashsoft for this hat, and that's what I did. Twice, in fact. The first time, during the Superbowl, I managed to twist my stitches, and only discovered the mobius-strip quality of my knitting the next day. So I frogged it, and made extra-sure (no Cosmo this time) not to twist my stitches when I cast on my 140 again. Two days of travel-knitting: in the car, in the DC Metro, in Jennie's living room while watching movies... came to the end of the ball... aaaannd the darn thing is huge. The above photo is me, wearing the hat lining over my glasses. It fit quite comfortably that way, thank you. A little hard to see, though.

I did attempt to salvage the work by trying out my friend Tara's serger -- not on the Cashsoft, thank goodness, but on some spare knitting scraps that Tara had lying around her apartment. (And forgot to take photos, of course.) The serger idea didn't so much work, so...

Into the Frogpile with you!
There goes all the travel knitting from my time in DC.

Ah, well, frogging builds character.

Then again, I forgot to recheck my gauge before I frogged, so I just had to guess. I cast on 126 stitches last night, and hopefully that'll be a better fit.

Good Cable, Bad Cable

2009-02-09T17:30:00.005-05:00

See this cable here? The one my finger is pointing to?

You wouldn't know it unless I told you, but that is a mis-crossed cable. The cable that's crossed over the top is supposed to be underneath, and vice versa.

Oh, and it's two rows down.

I mis-crossed this cable on all 20 pattern repeats. Because I'm awesome. Sigh.

Rather than rip out several rows of cabling, thereby risking untold numbers of dropped stitches and losing my place in the chart (there were 400-some stitches per row at this point!), I decided that it would be better to do a micro-fix of each mis-crossed cable. First I took out the four stitches above the mis-cross, and dropped down to where the cable-crossing actually happened.

Using an extra DPN of the same size as my main needles, I picked up the four offending stitches and crossed them correctly, then (using a second extra DPN) re-knit the next stitches up one-by-one, very carefully.

Then I continued knitting along until I got to the next spot where I needed to drop stitches and start over. I did this on all 20 mis-crossed cables, so my Tangled Yoke came out perfectly. (The misadventures along the way are half the fun of the knitting, right?)

Et voilà! A correctly crossed cable!

My Tangled Yoke Cardigan has now made public appearances in both DC and Vermont. If by "public" you mean "a friend's living room." I have yet to get someone to take an actual picture of me wearing the darn thing, though. Still, it has been OOHed and AAHed over appropriately, so I ain't complainin'. I have a nasty head cold right now, so it's not like I'm really out and about anyway.

BLOGIVERSARY!

2009-02-06T00:01:00.003-05:00

I cannot believe I've been knitblogging for three years. I missed my 2nd blogiversary altogether, and celebrated the first a couple of months after the fact. But now I've done year three, and, frankly, I'm amazed that I've stuck with it this long.

I think that knitting is a bigger part of my life now than it was when I started the blog. Thanks for reading, and sharing this journey with me.

The Tangled Yoke Cardigan Is Officially Done

2009-02-03T12:22:00.000-05:00

For now, I'm just posting a couple of Finished Object photos. Tales of my escapades with this project will have to wait for another day.

Wet-blocking. There was so much lanolin in the yarn, the FO needed to be washed pretty thoroughly anyway. I will have to go back and steam-block the buttonhole band, because it's curling as it dries.

A close-up of the yoke. When I did a search as I first started the project and needed getting-over-it help, I couldn't find any close-ups on the internets. So here's mine. Pay it forward.

Flurries Mittens -- Felted!

2009-02-02T12:16:00.000-05:00

Dear Laundromat Washing Machine Repair Guy,

Okay, so I know it's not really all that nice of me to felt my knitted items in a machine that is not my own. That's why I put the mittens in the pillowcase. I checked faithfully, but the pillowcase kept opening and the mittens kept swishing themselves out as the machine agitated. I am terribly sorry. Next time, I promise I will use safety pins to keep the pillowcase closed. This is the way it's going to have to be until we are able to get our own washing machine. Monday was laundry day.

Please forgive me,
HolyKnitter

p.s. but aren't these mittens so wonderful?!!?!? love love love!

The Knitting Queen

2009-02-01T21:00:00.001-05:00

Now that she's done with graduate school (CONGRATULATIONS!!!!), my friend Jennie has resurrected her knitting blog, which was the original inspiration for my blog. She's even given it a facelift, with new pretty colors and a cleaner general aesthetic. So you should all go visit her blog and leave lots of encouraging "glad you're back!" comments.

I, for one, am going to visit her. In person. Right now.

In fact, I wrote this entry ahead of time and scheduled it to post while I'm in-flight. Jennie, please remember to pick me up at the airport!

BSJ #1 in use!

2009-01-30T18:38:00.002-05:00

Remember the Baby Surprise Jacket I knit for Sister's Baby way back in the spring? Here it is in action:

Nephew is 2 weeks old in this photo, and the jacket is too big for him, but that makes it even more adorable. He's been growing like gangbusters (he's biggest -- and happiest -- and smartest -- and sweetest -- and mellowest -- baby in the Mommies Group!), so I wouldn't be surprised if he's already outgrown this one. Good thing I made him two.

And yes, Mom: Sister said it was okay to post this photo.

Knitting up a Storm

2009-01-29T12:00:00.002-05:00

I'm a bit behind on my picture-taking, and therefore a bit behind on the blogging, too. Then again, when have I ever bothered to worry about that before? There are tons of things I've made and photographed that I haven't gotten around to blogging yet...

The shop was having a closeout sale on some older Tilli Tomas yarn. Now, that's a yarn that is firmly out of my price range, even now that I get an employee discount, but closeout yarn is even deeper discount, and so I figured that this would be my only chance if I ever were to buy any. So I went for it. After a long and tortured decision-making/bullet-biting process, I bought four skeins of navy, and decided to make a hat and mitten set for myself.

The yarn is called Flurries, a worsted-weight singles merino yarn with glass beads spun in about every four inches. Beautiful. The company changed the yardage of a skein (from 130 yards to 70 yards!), which is why we had to close out the older (larger!) skeins. Otherwise, Tilli Tomas does not go on sale. Period.

I had a random ball of a lavender/pink-y Rowan Cashsoft 4-ply laying around (another sale bin purchase), and decided to use that for the inside cuffs of the mittens. I cast on 52 stitches, using size 4 needles, and knit stockinette in the round for 2.5 inches (20 rounds).

(gauge for the Cashsoft: 26 sts. = 4 in.)

Then I switched to size 7 needles, joined on the Tilli Tomas, and decreased down to 46 sts. at the same time: k2tog, *k8, k2tog.* Next round, I purled so the cuff would turn under nicely. I knitted in stockinette for a couple of inches and realized that the mitten was going to be too big around -- but that frogging would be a horrible experience (even more than usual) because of those beads. So at that moment, I decided that these were going to be felted mittens. (GASP! Felting Tilli Tomas! My heart did skip a beat for a moment, it's true.)

(gauge for the Flurries before felting: 18 sts. = 4 in.)

I kept going, knitting the cast-on edge into the Flurries when I got that far, and started increasing for the thumb gusset at 4 inches (28 rounds after the purl round), doing paired M1 increases every other round until I had 13 thumb stitches (yes, I messed up in there somewhere and added an M1 when I shouldn't have -- so I did the same thing on the second mitten). including the two "center" stitches around which I was increasing. Then I put those 13 sts on a holder, rejoined in the round with two added stitches for the hand (to make up for the loss of the two "center" stitches that became part of the thumb). (So, still 46 sts.)

24 rounds after the thumb-hole/rejoin, I began decreasing heavily for the top of the mitten, and after a few rows made it down to 10 stitches, then cut and pulled the yarn-end through those last ten. This is also where I stopped taking pictures, apparently.

I did make a thumb. I did make a second mitten to match the first. I did felt them. At some point, I will post finished-object photos.

Just not today.

Also, I will make a hat to match at some point. But I haven't done it yet. Fodder for future posts!

Ugliest Socks EVER

2009-01-28T17:40:00.000-05:00

When I bought this yarn, it was in a taped-closed bag (in the final sale bin), and I thought it was black, gray, and brown. Very manly.

When I got it home and opened the bag, I discovered that what I thought was black was actually purple and teal. What I thought was gray was actually lavender. And what I thought was brown was... baby-poop brown.

These socks are not going to be pretty. Or manly.

I cast on for them about three weeks before Christmas, thinking they would be a good last-minute present for Husband. This is as far as I've gotten on them, mostly because both Husband and I think the yarn is so ugly that neither of us wants the socks. They will likely end up being charity knitting; for now, they are just "purse socks." I worked on them yesterday when I went through the car wash and had a couple of minutes of enforced-sitting-in-the-car. That's the kind of project these babies have become.

Also, it's a Kaffe Fassett colorway. Normally I like his color pairings, but this one, ah, lowers his work in my estimation. There's a reason the Project Runway judges talk so much about "taste level." It's so people like me can get all snarky when the sale yarn they buy turns out to be ugly!

(The lighting is sub-par in this photo, but the colors are still eerily accurate!)(On my monitor, at least.)

Psalm 139, part II

2009-01-21T12:00:00.000-05:00

More sermon...

The other element of this great intimacy between knitter and knitted is a physical connection that has a spiritual element. As you knit, pieces of yourself are integrated into the garment you are knitting: strands of hair, skin cells, sweat, and so on. You literally put yourself into your project. You don’t know this transfer is happening, usually; and you have very little control over it. Your knitting project will forever contain little inextricable bits of you.

At the same time, in the process of knitting, sometimes fibers come dislodged from the yarn and float around in the air. They land on your skin as you knit. You inhale them accidentally, without even knowing it. You may get fibers in your mouth as you talk, and you end up swallowing them. Just as pieces of you are being integrated into your knitting, little bits of your knitting are becoming a part of you, as well. There is an exchange of being.

A piece of God rubbed off on you as you were being created. And a piece of you rubbed off on God. You and God are a part of one another; that’s how close you are.

(and a bit later...)

Faith calls us to a place of daring: daring to name the closeness of our relationship with our Creator; daring to name the holiness of our own creation; daring to be the person we were created to be, rather than trying to be Moses, or Jesus, or anyone else. We are gathered together by the Holy Spirit to be a community of daring – a community that dares to affirm our own sacred worth, the sacred worth of all creatures of God.

The truth of our created-ness is the one thing that we all have in common with every other human being around the world. God carefully and lovingly crafted each person; there is no one who was NOT made with God’s love and care. Perhaps that is why it hurts us so much when our brothers and sisters in the Middle East shoot rockets and bombs at one another, or when little boys are kidnapped from their villages in Africa and forced to kill one another to prove that they are men, or when kids in our own community are violated and slain. God knit each one of them together to be unique, to be a blessing that only they could be, and killing one another dishonors God’s handiwork. They were fearfully and lovingly made, but their unraveling was not nearly so holy. There is a piece of God in each of them, and there is a piece of God in each of us – and pieces of all of us in God. Of course we hurt when those pieces of God are destroyed!

We each have this intimate experience, this personal understanding of God as Creator, stitch by loving stitch. We are each called to be ourselves, a one-of-a-kind creation, a unique work of God’s fingers. And we are called together to recognize our common link as a community, to celebrate the sacredness of God’s whole creation. God knows each one of us better than we know ourselves, and far better than we know one another! Isn’t that reason enough to join together in God’s name? Let us rejoice, as God’s people, God’s knitting projects, God’s afghan, stitched together through our common calling to discipleship and faith. Let us share in God’s accessibility, God’s intimacy, God’s immediacy with us. Let us praise God, for we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Psalm 139

2009-01-19T23:00:00.002-05:00

On Sunday, two of my great loves converged: God and knitting. Turns out, the tag on the bottom of my plan (scroll down) turns up in the lectionary -- that is, every three years or so, I *get* to preach on Psalm 139. And Psalm 139 declares in no uncertain terms that God is a knitter:

O Lord, you have searched me and known me,
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it...
For it was you who fomed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works,
That I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
When I was being made in secret,
Intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them -- they are more than the sand.
I come to the end -- I am still with you.

So yeah, God is a knitter.
I don't intend to use this blog as a platform for my own religious beliefs, but it is a knitting blog that theoretically is intended to touch on the intersection of knitting and spiritual practice... so yesterday's sermon presented me the perfect opportunity to reflect formally on the metaphor of God as Knitter, and I want to share it with whoever reads this blog. (Hi, Mom.) It would be too much to put the whole text of the sermon here, but I'm going to put in part now, and part later. Here you go:

That’s what Psalm 139 is expressing. The intimacy of God’s knowledge of each one of us. The nearness of God. The immediacy. God knows you better than you know yourself. God knows when you get up, and when you lie down. God knows your thoughts before you think them, and your words before you speak them. God is immanent, close at hand – inside you, even. And the author of this psalm used the metaphor of knitting to express this closeness. It’s a metaphor that probably made a lot more sense before modern industrialization, before the rise of cottage industry, the division of labor, and the invention of the knitting machine – back in a time when people made their own clothes, God as a knitter or a weaver would be an accessible metaphor. Today, we do not make very much of what we have, and so we have lost the sense of intimacy that the psalm is trying to convey.

But I’d like you all to think of something you’ve made. Maybe it’s a piece of clothing, maybe it’s a carving, maybe it’s a delicious turkey on Thanksgiving day, or a treehouse, or a child. And I want you to think about the care and time and attention and work and love you put in to the process of creating that carving or that turkey or that child. And I want you to think about the joy you felt as you were creating something you love, and the pride you feel right now as you think about your accomplishment. Maybe you made it to give away to someone who needs it. Maybe you made it to keep for yourself, to use and enjoy. Maybe you made it just because you wanted to make it – and now it sits in a box in the garage and you haven’t looked at it in ten years, because you made it just to make it. But think about that love, and that joy, and that pride you felt, and that you feel now.

That’s how God feels about you.

God is a knitter.

There’s a lot of thinking and dreaming and planning that goes into knitting, before you even cast yarn onto your needles. What kind of yarn do you want to use? What size? What texture? What color? Alpaca fibers are four times warmer than wool – but alpaca relaxes when you knit with it, and wool keeps its shape better. Silk is shiny and strong– but it doesn’t stretch, so you’re very limited in what kinds of stitches you can use. Linen is very durable, and is wonderful to wear on hot days – but it wrinkles like no other. There are a lot of options, a lot of decisions to make before you begin.

There’s also a great deal of improvisation in knitting – watching the yarn, feeling it as it slips through your fingers, changing the size of your needles, or how tightly you hold the yarn, or what kinds of stitches you make. You listen to your project as you’re making it, and respond to what the yarn is telling you.

And there are no shortcuts in knitting. The average sweater has hundreds of thousands of stitches in it, and you have to make every single one individually. You can’t make five stitches at once. Every stitch you form is intentional – and it becomes very personal. Every stitch is a moment in time, a piece of love. Every stitch is a prayer.

This is what the Psalmist means when he writes that God has searched you and known you, that God knows your every movement and your every thought. God has formed your being, stitch by loving stitch. God knows how those stitches fit together because God made each one of them. God chose the yarn and the needles and the stitch pattern and the design, and God cast on for you – and then sat back and observed, and adjusted, and amended, until you were just right. You were fearfully and wonderfully made. You are one-of-a-kind. You are a custom piece. Even things that are supposed to be pairs – like socks, or mittens, or sweater sleeves – end up being slightly different, because of a snag in the yarn, or an irregularity in the dye, or miscounting by the knitter. You are totally unique, because God formed each of your stitches just-so.

More in a few days...

(and I've finished the cable on the Tangled Yoke Cardigan. And made a pair of mittens. More on that soon, too.)

WIP Wednesday: Tangled Yoke Cardigan

2009-01-14T12:27:00.000-05:00

The "WIP Wednesday" thing is a bit gimmicky, but whatever.

I bought a giant cone of anonymous wool sport/DK-weight yarn at Vermont Sheep and Wool this September, $15 for 2250 yards! It's brown with a gray halo, well-spun (2-ply) but not thoroughly washed, so full of lanolin. I think I like that, but it's a little bit weird to have two lightly-waxed fingertips on each hand.

Usually when I buy yarn, I sometimes have a vague idea of what I want to do with it.... but I'm not one of those people who has the self-discipline to buy specific yarn for a specific project and that's it. I buy stash yarn, and then knit from my stash. But with this yarn, I knew exactly what it was for: the Tangled Yoke Cardigan from Fall 2007 Interweave Knits.

I began working on a sleeve during a three-day conference/continuing-ed retreat at the end of September, and got about 8 inches done. Perfect gauge, first try, no fiddling at all. Love it. I also love going to three-day-long meetings where it’s okay to knit and learn things at the same time. The world needs to be like that more often. I also went to Boston the next week for an overnight and did a bit of subway knitting while I was there.

I made little progress until the end of October/beginning of November, when an unexpected family funeral gave me two five-hour-or-so plane rides to fill, and I got both sleeves done and the first couple of inches of the body started.

Then I took a month-and-a-half break. I had a couple of smaller projects I needed/wanted to do for Christmas (like socks), and Christmas is generally a busy time for pastors anyway. BUT... two days after Christmas, I was back at it. I spent several days knitting seriously (particularly New Years Eve and Day, when we watched three or four movies in a row and I didn't change out of my pjs that whole time), and within the first week of the new year I had the body done, the sleeves attached, and about 2" of yoke completed.

And this is where I had to admit to myself that, well, the cable chart looks kind of scary. I wanted to do a more challenging cable than I'd done before, but still. I was feeling a bit nervous. I'm also well aware that looks can be deceiving when it comes to knitting, and the chart's bark was probably worse than its bite. I was intimidated, but figured I'd just have to get over it.

I was right.

Something wasn't right in my counting in the decrease row, so the set-up row of the chart took me forever. I had to keep ripping and reknitting these two rows several times -- two Gene Kelley/Fred Astaire movies back-to-back, and all I had to show for my time was those two rows. But they are well-done rows, let me tell you! And I figured out that all the WS rows of the chart are just plain-ol' purl-back rows. I was WAY less worried about this cable when I realized that. Hello.

I set a goal of knitting up one RS chart row and its purl-back WS row every day. Since each row is 300-400-some stitches, that's still quite a lot of knitting.

I'm currently ahead of my goal, because I did four or five rows while watching the Golden Globes on Sunday night. But I had to stop for the night when the muscles in my hands really started to ache -- too much holding-tight-while-cabling! First time that's ever happened, but it's really not surprising. I put the heating pad on my lap and my hands on the pad, and then the cat sat on my hands for a while. Fun! Then I went to bed, and when I woke up my hands felt fine. No worries.

So now I'm about halfway through the cable, and have realized that there's nothing in this chart that is scary at all. I'm so not intimidated by this cable anymore, and that was the point of tackling this project! Well, that and getting a new sweater.

Oh! I also kitchenered the underarm seams already, so I don't have to deal with that later. Also so I could avoid the cable chart for one more night, which I was fully capable of admitting to myself and to Husband. Doing the underarm seams early has the added benefit of making it easier to try on the sweater in progress. Yes, this photo is terribly unflattering. I'm okay with that. Like my cloud pjs?

Baby Strawberry Hands

2009-01-12T23:46:00.000-05:00

Several months ago, while Sister was still pregnant (but very close to due), I decided that Baby needed a pair of thrummed mittens that looked like strawberries. Then we could call him Baby Strawberry Hands -- which sounds vaguely like Edward Scissorhands, but much cuter.

I improvised the pattern, using the leftover Cadenza from the Red Bear, but didn't write it down. I made the first Strawberry in one night (maybe two?), and then it took me longer than I'd anticipated to sit down and work on the second one, so I had time to forget what I'd done. And then the first attempt at Strawberry #2 was terrible, so I frogged it and started over... well, my nephew is now three months old, and I just finished the second Strawberry today. And this after making a concerted effort to finish!

But SO CUTE!!!! He may have already outgrown them, I don't know. He is a BIG baby. But I'm popping them in the mail soon, and maybe he'll get a couple of days' use out of them.

I think I cast on two or three stitches and kfb-ed every stitch a few times, working in the round (size 5 DPNs). Then I just kept increasing randomly, adding the occasional thrum, and probably got up to around 100 stitches total. Then I started decreasing, also randomly. I also threw in purl ribs here and there along with the decreasing, so that the surface would have that irregular bumpy shape like a strawberry. (Inasmuch as you can make mittens look like a strawberry, that is! They're not very pointy/triangular.) I decreased down to 20 sts, all purls, and then switched to larger dpns and the green yarn, which is Jill Eaton Minnow Merino, by Classic Elite Yarns. I think I used size 6 for the first mitten, and 7s for the second mitten; it's hard to tell. Anyway, I did 6 rounds of k1p1 rib and then bound off loosely. I did a single-crochet chain to connect the two, so now they look like strawberries on the vine! And the vine can go through his coat sleeves.

Seriously adorable.

Be Jealous...I mean, be happy for me!

2009-01-11T02:25:00.000-05:00

A couple of months or so ago, I showed up at my usual Sunday afternoon knitting group and there were new people there, which always makes me happy. On this particular day, I was absolutely giddy, and I think I may have scared a couple of the new people away. Whoops. Sorry, gals.

The cause of my giddiness (combined with a probable lack of sleep) was meeting a fellow knitter who, it turns out, also went to the same college as I did, and knew several of my old college friends. I haven't been feeling terribly homesick or displaced lately, but it's always huge to find someone with whom you click so immediately -- especially when you discover that you actually do have something of a shared history/experience, like going to the same college. We found ourselves calling across the table things like "hey, were you there the time that kid fell out the window of the Forum?" or "Did you know that the Pub is now closed? Can you believe that?!?!??"

Soooo, it turns out that this particular friend works part-time at Kaleidoscope Yarns. Scratch that: she worked part-time there, only on Saturdays... but when another employee left, my friend moved to working full-time. And then the question arose, "what are we going to do about Saturdays?" and, ever the helpful yarn shop employee, my friend said "What about hiring my friend HolyKnitter?" She showed up at Sunday afternoon knitting that week and asked if I wanted the job.

Um, YES.

Really, this would have been an awesomely fun opportunity no matter what, but it turns out that the job market in Burlington has not been so kind to Husband (he has worked an approximate total of three weeks in the past year), and we actually could use a bit of an income boost. I'd been wondering about second-job options, but hadn't actually looked seriously at anything, as Husband's job-searching experience has taught him that it's pretty difficult to find a part-time job around here that will allow "my other job comes first" flexibility... and, since my career is the ministry, it's important that any other job I do allows me to put it on the back burner if something comes up. I'm super happy to work on Saturdays, unless I have to do a funeral. Church comes first.

Thankfully, Jill at Kaleidoscope understands that, and is just happy to have me working at all. If I can give her the occasional actual-weekend-at-home-not-working, I'm glad to be able to help. If that means I also get to put my love of knitting to a use that benefits people other than myself, so much the better! (If that also means I get an employee discount... well, chances are that Jill is actually making more money off of me than if I didn't work there.)

So I've got a second job. And so far it's been great. I like my co-workers (I'm getting used to having co-workers again -- I'd just gotten used to having colleagues!), I generally like the customers, and I've already learned a ton, and I've also had a great time realizing how much I didn't know that I know! Also, our holiday party was dinner at the awesome sushi restaurant in town.

You never know what kind of surprises God is going to throw your way.