January 20, 2008 at 10:53 am · Filed under knit
I started a new project last night. Sure, there is certainly no need for a new project, have plenty of projects to keep me amused, but this is a baby blanket for a new one due within the next month. Actually for the friend of a relative. Biggish project for someone I really don’t know, but a) they’re good people and they’re making more good people and good people deserve binkies b) she’s from New Zealand, surely she has attics full of spinning wheels or is an heir to a Majacraft dynasty (if such a thing exists) and c) I bought the yarn months ago, technically it’s stash-busting.
So I start, Saturday night at home baby-sitting a two year old. I manage to get a decent enough (read: long enough) crochet provisional cast on and get the required 172 stitches on the needle. At least I think it’s 172…the two year old interrupts me each time I count slightly over 100. I start over. He interrupts. I start over. He interrupts. This goes on for an hour or so (with breaks for “Chase Me!” and “Let’s see how far we can throw Thomas the Tank Engine” and –my fave– “Let’s see how hard we can hit Auntie with Thomas the Tank Engine”.
Finally I get 172 stitches on the needle…all counted, double-checked and accounted for. I check the pattern. It says there should be 176 stitches. Excellent! An error caught before an error made. I live for these things. Along with spending Saturday nights locked indoors with a two-year old.
I knit the first row, it’s a no-nonsense 10 stitch repeat lace pattern. I get the the end of the row with four extra stitches.
Shit.
Normally this is where I would chuck the thing, tell myself it wasn’t meant to be and spend the rest of the night bitterly flipping the pages of a magazine. But no, I persevere. I find the two errors (two missing k2togs) at around stitch 20. Stitch 20 out of 176. I persevere and unknit and start over. But it’s an easy lace pattern and I truck on…until the end of the first row. Where I find…two extra stitches.
Oh for the love of …
I find the errors and knit back and start again. This time…I do not truck on. I do go on auto-pilot. I practically read each stitch as it’s made..out loud…through clenched teeth. I go the extra mile, earn my due-diligence scout badge and check each repeat after it’s made.
I make it to the end of the row. All stitches present and accounted for. Life is good…I continue carefully and I begin to see a lace pattern. I might have heard angels weep, but they were drowned out by a two year old yelling “COAL CAR” repeatedly. For no particular reason (who knows…it might be fun to say) and with no sense of volume control.
I continue on to the second part of the lace pattern…where bits of the first part get slightly reversed. The yo goes here instead of there. The k2tog is replaced with an ssk. I continue…with care.
And then I start to realize that my ssk’s still look a bit like the dog’s breakfast. I go on-line. I read all of the little tips and tricks to improving ssks. Slip the first one knitwise, second purlwise…that sort of thing. I admit to myself that I have read all of these before. I have tried all of these before. None of these work for me.
I stare a the pattern.
I don’t see ANY ssks.
There is a conspiracy. Surely the designer tweaked her version to an “all k2tog…no ssk” version and left the rest of us to suffer.
I go on Ravelry and look at other FOs. None of them have anything that look like ssks. (Or …they are simply superior knitters..and I need to go back to flipping the pages of a glossy magazine).
I look at the pattern…
..as is for the first time.
There are no ssks. All k2tog…all the time. I assumed. And I am dumb. Stone-dumb. Wet, cold stone-dumb. Wet, cold-stone-at-the-bottom-of-a-well-covered-in-moss that-is-no-doubt-a-higher-lifeform-than-me dumb.
I look at the two-year old. He looks at me.
I scream “COAL CAR!!!!!!” He grins..and I feel better.
January 4, 2008 at 7:08 am · Filed under personal
We’ve survived yet another holiday season. This one will extra-special challenges. First up: a seizing cat. Zut had a series of seizures a week before Xmas. We spent several hours in the animal hospital (late night visit - these things can never happen during the day). Never got a root cause..and won’t get one without a Catscan. We won’t go that route. Boyo is nearly 13, been FIV+ for 7 or so of those. For now he is doing well, resting up and being as free from cat stress as I can make him. Next: an ill child. No comment on that, but all’s looking well now, though we all took a nice psychic wallop from that ordeal. Third: shipped my brother off to Africa for another year.
On the positive side. Got a spinning wheel (a second-hand Minstrel). Haven’t spent much time with it yet…waiting on some goodies to arrive and looking for tutelage in the area. (And honestly…am perfectly happy with using my spindles for the time being.) But it’s here for me when I’m ready. Also got a Wii. I happened to walk into Target when they picked up an order of 36. And despite the Vet and wheel expenditures…it came home with me.
On the knitting side. I’m happy to say that I’m nearly done with my Xmas knitting; just half a scarf and a quarter of a sock left to go. I’ll build the boy a sweater when those are handed off.
December 6, 2007 at 11:29 am · Filed under personal
Change the way you see disability…
(the stick insect is brilliant…)
December 3, 2007 at 5:05 pm · Filed under personal
I went to visit my brother in Southern California for Thanksgiving this year. I packed a few projects to keep me amused on the plane and while I sat and stared at the Pacific. (Anyone who lives in a home that faces water — or mountains, for that matter — must be completely and perfectly sane.) I brought along a pair of socks - worked on mostly while sitting in traffic on either the 5 or the 405. (Anyone living anywhere in Southern California must instantly lose their sanity the second they set wheel onto a freeway.) I finished my Koolhas on the flight to California.
That left me many, many hours to complete my Hanging Vines stole. I added 5-6 repeats (48 rows per repeat) while I was there. I stopped at 15 repeats. It was enough…it was more than enough. I waited a week before blocking. I pretty much had to force myself to sit down and block the thing…an hour or so with a blob of wet wool on my lap surgically inserting blocking wires. It wasn’t until the thing was entirely spread out that I the “blah-ness” went away and I was actually able to appreciate the thing.
Pattern: Hanging Vines Stole by Silvia Harding
Yarn: Knit Picks Shadow in Vineyard
Needles: Knit Picks Options - size 4
Finished size: 21 x 84
*crap photo, will try to better document..but with the number of daylight hours greatly reduced, might not be for some time.
On the flight back, one of the flight attendants became transfixed with the sock I was knitting. (This was a first in the many, many flights I’ve knit through.) She had never seen anyone knit on two circulars, only DPNs. The other attendant in the main cabin was summoned. Yarn petting commenced. It was Dream in Color Smooshy yarn, I would’ve let the entire cabin cop a feel if I thought there was any interest.
November 12, 2007 at 3:13 pm · Filed under knit
…on my behalf. Praise be and …..grrrr.
Truly…this weekend I wanted nothing more than to start a new project. Specifically a lace project. Something biggish. The first blind stab was an attempt at a stole from Victorian Lace today…7 rows in, gauge looked dicey…insta-frog. Painless. Second was a stab at a lengthwise lace stole with Handmaiden 2ply cashmere that’s been neglected for too long…cast on 303 stitches, knitted 9 rows, discovered an irrecoverable error around row 5…insta-frog. Slightly painful (parting with cashmere, especially.)
I won’t complain about the fairness of it all. Would’ve been nice to get a few things out of my ravelry queue…and surely that’s my reward for having a few more finished objects floating around.
I have been plenty productive…
Item #1 - spinning.
Made my first (wee, tiny) skein - the blue Finn top and have nearly finished spinning my 2 oz. of Merino from Chasing Rainbows.
Item #2 - Maine Morning Mitts
Yes. They’re done. Had to force myself. The last hundred stitches or so were each cruel and unusual. Why? It was 80+ degrees in Dallas. Too hot to be thinking about mittens…much less wool.*
Item # 3 - Baby Surprise Jacket
After a week or two of hibernation. No good excuse. There was some self-doubt around the pick-up row…I convinced myself that I had picked up on the wrong side. I couldn’t bear to look. Two weeks later; I looked. It was fine. Ten more painless rows, a little brow-furrowing on the seaming (this was the first garter seaming I think I’ve ever done) and some fumbling with a crochet hook and …finished! I’m knee-deep in pleased over this one. Possibly one of the finest finishing jobs I’ve managed. I may go all garter, all the time.
I should’ve been thinking about Maine, I suppose.
November 1, 2007 at 9:38 am · Filed under knit
I WANT A BABY MUSK OX. NOW!
October 30, 2007 at 2:50 pm · Filed under knit
One of the joins on my KnitPicks Options needles has given up the ghost. Nothing that a bit of glue and a time-out won’t fix. And yet, I was ok with knitting with it. I kept on knitting…the join would un-join, I’d knit to the end of the repeat, re-attach the cord and pick all of the stiches (90 to be exact) and then continue on the next row.
I was comfortable. I didn’t want to hunt down glue. I didn’t want to get up. I didn’t want to stop knitting.
It lasted ten more rows.
October 29, 2007 at 8:11 am · Filed under knit
I try not to get caught up in knitting trends; I try to stick with projects that have all the “rights” (right yarn, right recipient, right pattern, etc.) So I had some misgivings when I jumped aboard the Baby Surprise Jacket bandwagon. But then…I figured it was time to embrace Elizabeth Zimmerman. Have read her work (not in-depth, to be honest) for some years and knew she had some extra-special smart (mostly in the form of extra-special dumbing down) that I am continually in need of. So..the BSJ is my cordial, nice-to-meet-you, handshake with EZ. (When I finish this, I’ll find something for a full-on EZ embrace.)
Found the perfect yarn at Rhinebeck, tore into the thing and am maybe 70% done.
I don’t have a recipient in mind for this. Not sure I’ll even give it away. It’s a pricey and impractical experiment right now. $70 of Wool/Silk for a garment that might never be worn? For a handshake? I think I’m ok with that.
October 29, 2007 at 7:54 am · Filed under knit
The weather gods did hear my plea. Turns out I should have been a little more specific. It was a little bit on the warm side…I was hoping for something a little more on the crisp side. Cheek-pinking cool, perhaps. No matter. Bright blue skies for the win.
I did get to drive up the Taconic; in fact, bleary-early Sunday morning, I had the Taconic all to myself.
As for the fair, I had some time to shop without being overwhelmed by crowds. I had the Frenched Artichokes (perfect!) and I had pie. And I had Maple trees.
I found the perfect yarn for a BSJ. 8 oz. of Cormo/Silk from Foxhill Farm. The color is beyond perfect - exactly what I had imagined I wanted.
Somewhere in my travels, it occurred to me that I might want to try spinning again*. I had started to poke around looking at wheels online before the trip, but once I got on site and was surrounded by fleece, I was pretty much a goner.
I stopped by the Bosworth booth and insinuated myself in a demo that Sheila was giving. Nothing like a few minutes in the presence of an expert to convince yourself that what looks easy for an expert might actually be do-able for a bona-fide klutz.
10 minutes later, with my new Bubinga spindle…I headed back out into the world in search of fiber. I was suddenly utterly immune to yarn. Bummer.
4 oz. of Finn Top from Misty Mountain Farm.
2 oz. of Merino Top from Chasing Rainbows.
(Actually - it had more to do with the realization that the yarn I wanted to find doesn’t actually exist. The colorway exists…but it exists in mohair only. The yarn exists…but it it’s the wrong color. I’ll have a better chance of making it myself…y’know 5 yrs from now when I’ve managed to wrangle together the skills required to create the stuff. Goodbye instantgratification, my dear old friend.)
October 15, 2007 at 10:34 am · Filed under personal
Yeah. The gods have smiled upon me. I think I may have gotten a bit of a wink too.
I’ve being called back to New York for a business trip the fourth week in October..which means, I can steal a day (or part of it, at any rate) and go to the NYS Sheep and Wool festival. It’ll be my first visit since leaving the Hudson Valley and becoming a Texan.
I have a little bit of trepidation.
I know I’ll be driving up the wonderfully twisty and hilly Taconic Parkway Sunday morning (the same Parkway that I cursed for 2 hrs a day during my commuter life). I know it will be close to peak for Fall foliage. And I know it will be sunny (smiley Gods please make note.) It might just be the thing to get me to pack up and move back. Maybe.
(Heavens. I’m homesick. It took me a full year, but there it is.)
As for the festival itself…I’ll be doing the relaxed tourist thing. Enjoying the sunshine (Gods? noted the weather request yet?) and the crowds. I will not be showing up with a list of “must-come-back withs”. But if I can wish (aside from the weather) 1200 yards of a murky, deep ocean colored laceweight for a Baltic Sea stole, STR for my collection, some handspun for a Baby Surprise Jacket, and anything small, special and lovely to fit in my luggage.
And I will certainly start making plans to go back next year.
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