newly converted

For ages now I've been listening to everyone rave on & on about the Mason-Dixon knitting book. How fantastic it is, how brilliant the two authors are, yet every time I'd open it (while shopping/sipping coffee in Barnes & Noble) I'd flip through some pages, and then put it back, a bit puzzled as to what all the fuss was about. Then the other day, in my shrug-knitting-starting-designing frenzy I went to the public library to snag some Nicky Epstein books (hey, I've never knitted a ruffle before, and I wanted to be sure that I was going to do it right!) and there was M-D Knitting right next to my outstretched hand........so I added it to the pile. And over lunch I browsed it and was thoroughly entranced - not only the ball band washcloth but also the log cabin examples (and those mitered squares!) but also the possibilities of calamari knitting. That is when you take very looooong loops (think about cross-sectioning the body of a t-shirt into long loops about 1" wide) and chain them together then roll the whole long thing into a ball and knit up the resultant "yarn" with huge-mongous needles. In such a way you can recycle old t-shirts into lovely things like placemats, cushion covers, bathmats, rag rugs, etc. And you don't have to sew any rag strips together or other such malarkey! As Peggers owns roughly 500 extra t-shirts that he doesn't wear and doesn't like and totally need to be rag-bagged, this is a perfect project for the fall - and as t-shirts all take dye fairly well anything that comes out a blah-ish colour can easily be tweaked to a nicer shade with a packet or two of Rit dye and a spin in the washing machine. What fun! So after a read or two I'm now a Mason-Dixon convert. While I might not buy the book anytime soon, I'll most certainly check it out again from the library - ditto with their next one which is due out next year!

I also spent the weekend working on my shrug with very very very disappointing progress. The shrug that I ultimately fell in LOVE with and am absolutely dying to make is the Belle Shrug by Laura Chau. It's available via Lettuce Knits, yet so far I have yet to hear back from the shop (I contacted them via e-mail.) I know that I can guesstimate how the pattern is put together, but I'd really rather read it for myself. However this is a moot point, as I know that I need about 1,000 yards of yarn for it - and I have only 665 yds of alpaca to work with (either the grey or the brown - take your pick.) Which means that I need to go stash-diving to make up the difference - and here is where I'm TOTALLY stuck.

I sat and stared at various skeins and balls of yarn for two whole days - trying to figure out if one colour or another would work - or trying to figure out if I could dye some yarn a different complimentary shade instead. Above you see the most likely contenders. The chocolate alpaca (currently the winner in my "what yarn for the body of the shrug?" contest) you can see wound into a huge yarn cake, while the other remnants cluster around wishing they could be that big & mighty.

In the photo above you have (clockwise from the alpaca): a ball of blue/white twist wool wrapped together with a strand of what looks to be alpaca in a light blue shade; a lovely ball of pink bamboo/merino Sockpal sockyarn that was hand-dyed for me courtesy of Jessie at Piece of Vermont; next up are two skeins of brown yarn - the one on the right is a skein of Claudia handpainted sockyarn that was a gift from Miriam Felton - on the left is a partial skein of Knitpicks Essential sockyarn in a chocolate-y brown; and at the very top, last but not least is a ball of three-ply alpaca in white/grey/black. I had huge hopes for this, but alas it seems far too thick compared to the chocolate alpaca (which isn't quite laceweight, but is thinner than most sock yarn!)

Checking to see how the brown & pink work together, despite the fact that I am **so not** a pink kind of girl........

Claudia Handpainted above the yarncake of Chocolate Alpaca....

So all of these look.................okay but when you compare it to the original shrug I just don't know if I like any of them well enough. Part of the problem is that this is really a lot to try and visualize - so today I reached the decision that I'm going to have to go ahead and knit what my friend Susan referred to a as a "monstrous colour swatch". I'm going to knit a huge bit of stockingknit - I'm thinking maybe 4"x18" and then along the sides of this swatch I'll pick up with the various colours and will knit the ruffle just like on the real shrug so that I can get a true feel for what it will ultimately look like. At this point I'm planning on knitting a brown ruffle, a pink ruffle, a brown sockyarn ruffle, and a blue maybe-alpaca ruffle. I'd prefer the blue to be darker, so I might dye a test bit first before I knit. But maybe not. First I probably need to skein it so that I can even see if I have enough blue to bother with.

A lot of knitting in preparation, I know, but as I really do just adore this chocolate alpaca and as I've been wanting a kick-ass shrug for quite some time now I really want it to come out nicely - so in the end it probably is all worth it.......

The saddest part of all is that I started both of the cuffs last night thinking that I could knit them at the same time and then Kitchner across the back (to be 100% certain that I didn't run out of yarn!) but now the colour combo that I originally settled on just isn't looking too good to me. But that's probably because I'm impatient and fickle - I figure that knitting a huge gauge/colour swatch will probably calm me down and help me to get some of the ants out of my pants where this pattern is concerned. Plus this way I might - just might - actually get the pattern from Lettuce Knits after I've spent several several several days knitting huge swatches and ruffles!

This is currently what my knitting basket looks like. At the very front is a pair of Snicket Socks. Looooooove that Sundara sockyarn! To the right is more Claudia handpainted. Behind the Claudia handpainted hiding under a yellow tape measure is P's vest waiting for me to knit it's last few crucial inches. To the left of the vest is some leftover bright orange/pink/purple sock yarn that I will be able to *finally* post about once the recipient's package arrives in the mail and they find out the surprise first. And finally, hidden in the lower left corner is some purple bamboo yarn still in raglan form waiting to be frogged.

Hmmmmmmmmm...............now looking at this picture I'm starting to wonder. Should I knit the shrug ruffle in the Sundara sock yarn and the Snicket Socks in the Claudia? I wonder if the Sundara yarn (which is a bit lighter w/ shots of orange & green in it) has a better colour scheme in general to it for this particular project and might work better as the Claudia is currently looking too dark to me.....................?

{sigh. That's me. Fickle.}

Happy Friday the 13th!

I myself have never believed in the whole 'Friday the 13th' malarky - for the majorly huge reason that I myself was born on a Friday the 13th. So you see, for me, it was a very very lucky day.

No real knitting progress to report here - I proctored a friend's exam today for him and was able to get in an hour's progress on the Mystery Stole3 (I'm now up to row 60 with nary a hitch, I'm pleased as punch to say!) and about 45 minutes of work on my Designing Sock project.

All quite boring blog stuff, as a picture of one will just look like a pearly grey scouring pad and the other can't be shown.

Well, I can at least show you a nicely artsy shot of the yarn I'm using - that would at least be a nice bit of colour on an otherwise text-full page!

There is an extremely good chance that I might have already showed you this picture already. If so my apologies - I didn't sleep all too well last night and waking at 5 to hear the sound of rain pitter-pattering down (a simultaneous joy and horror to me - joy because we're long overdue for a nice soaking - which is exactly what we got - and horror because I knew that at least two of my car windows had been left completely wide open) didn't help.

I had a friend over last night to do some knitting with me after the Munch went to sleep, but alas the little guy knew that I was eager for him to zonk out - with the end result being that he finally fell really & truly asleep around 10:30 - my friend having pleaded exhaustion and left a full half hour before that. I felt so bad that once he was finally down I went downstairs and made a batch of cherry vanilla cookies for her, and this morning packaged up a half dozen to bring in to her as a "sorry!" sort of gift. Don't you know they're still sitting on my kitchen counter?

**headdesk**

In the comments from the last post, my Mom (also known as Oma Annie) asked about a child's raglan cardigan pattern - as she has many many little ones to knit for. I gave her some recommendations - one of which being the Baby Surprise Jacket from EZ (I know, not a raglan, but it fit her other knitting requirements!) and suddenly I'm BURNING with the desire to get working on one myself in this otherwise somewhat dry knitting time. I could probably churn one of those babies out in just a week or two using some of the Gedifra yarn that I have a total plethora of - and my Munchkin can always use a new jacket come cooler weather, plus it would really eat a nice hole out of some of my stash yarn, which I'm trying really really REALLY hard to currently work from, having spent enough money lately on MS3 supplies and name tag bits and bobs.....

But as I have neither the Opinionated Knitter nor the Knitter's Almanac (the February Baby Sweater is also something I'd love to knit up!) I've ordered both books via ILL and will have to sit on my hands and wait until the former shows up. So I'm going to start a pair of Snicket Socks out of some amazing Sundara sock yarn

(the yarn is actually much more chocolate and less orange/red than this pic shows)

in the meantime, but as we all know very well that socks don't count I think I might also start a shrug - either the fabulous Drop Stitch Shrug by Meema Spadola in some chocolate

alpaca that I've got or the Twin-Set Shrug by Sharon Shoji in some slate



grey alpaca that I also have - both from the Misty Mountains booth at Maryland Sheep & Wool. I could wind either or both of them up tonight into center-pull balls while Peggers cooks dinner and then I could cast on one or the other during our after-dinner movie entertainment.

Why all the sudden starter-itis? Because I've recently finished so many things and it feels just BIZARRE to be without my normal number of WIP's. I'm a girl who likes her knitting variety, after all, and to be knitting only a mystery stole and to have only a few inches of P's vest left to finish feels like a knitting desert to me - not nearly enough to fully immerse myself in. So now all that's really left is peeking over these two patterns for the rest of the afternoon and making my choice!

{sigh} I've got such a tough life on a balmy Friday afternoon, don't I?????

O-U-C-H

Munchkin, having a fantastic time this weekend at the beach...

I'm not exactly sure why, but I ache everywhere. My back, all along my spine, is stunningly sore. My knees, hip joints, neck, and the left hinge of my jaw aches. My shoulders ache too. When I mentioned this fact to the Munch's daycare provider this evening as I went to pick him up, she said that maybe I had fibromyalgia. Or else maybe I had previously-undiagnosed rheumatoid arthritis and the incoming thunderstorm (and corresponding change in barometric pressure) was causing it to seriously twinge.

Cheerful, isn't she?

Peggers has it too, tho' - when he came to get the Munch he said that he too aches all over - mostly in his back - which makes me wonder if this isn't the start of something ickily viral that we've both caught and will soon fully come down with. Either that or else we've been bitten by the same tick and both have Lyme's disease. I'm guessing it's viral, myself.

Damn viruses.

It's not only achy and potentially stormy here, it's also STUNNINGLY hot. Today's heat index was 102 degrees, with almost 100% humidity. And while I went for a walk/run yesterday the warnings against such strenuous activity were just too obvious for me to do so again today. So rather than come into work a wee bit early and get in a run/walk (I work until 9 PM tonight, so I got to stay home until the early afternoon) I instead sat on the couch in my central-air-conditioned house set to a lovely and low-humidity 81 degrees and started watching the second season of Deadwood while I worked on a new pair of socks.

New socks that I can't show you, as they're an *original design * (Say it all together, now: "ooohhhhhhhh, ahhhhhhhhhh") of my own that I might - just might - submit for publication somewhere. Depending on what my design workshop folks tell me. Even if they're not accepted anywhere, I really really really like them - which is good - because no matter what at the end of all this I'll have a nifty & beautiful pair of handknit socks for myself, which is always a good thing, right my lovely ducklings?

New stamp, stamp pads - black and brown - and twill tape. All 15 feet of it.

I'm also currently working on writing up the pattern for my Screw-y Socks - one that Gryphon might take as a pattern to sell on her Etsy shop. I'm having fun typing it up and making it look all magazine-y and official. When I'm done I'll put it in pdf format, so it will look really and truly special and official. (Again, everyone: "ooooooohhhhhhhh....................aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!") To help me in this endeavor I was able to steal back the original pair of Screw-y socks from their gift recipient which is extra extra extra helpful - nothing like actually physically counting stitches and poking at a gusset to help you to remember what you did while knitting! That also means that I can take extra pictures, which is always good as well.

Speaking of extra pictures, here are some recent ones from my digital camera taken over the weekend, this morning, and this evening:

A finished sockpal sock heel. More pictures will - of course
appear here eventually. Many, many more. :)

Beautiful, beautiful, smooth organic woven cotton ribbon/twill tape.

Pink sockpal footsies.

Remember how I won a contest at Mim's blog? My gift box from Miriam came! 2 skeins of Claudia handpainted sock yarn ('Chocolate' colourway) plus real chocolate as well! That's in my tummy - so no pics of that, I'm afraid.....

A shot of how I more (or, in this case, less) managed to get
the cuff of my sockpal socks to match.
Sorta'.
Kinda'.

And I have a confession to make about Mystery Stole 3. I've frogged it. Again. You cannot cheat with Ms. Mystery - she's not a Birch or an Icarus that is quite so easy and forgiving as those two kind, kind souls. There is no room to craftily hide your lack of attention or your extra stitch or missing yarnover - she's a demanding, demanding snippet of a mistress. Every stitch, every row, has to be carefully counted, watched, looked after and scrutinized. And what that means for me is a book on CD or iPod (goodbye 2nd season of Deadwood - you and I shall henceforth only meet over vests and socks!), a cookbook holder used to prop up my chart and written directions, a pencil to shade out my knitted rows/stitches so that I can better keep track as I go, and - last but certainly not least - a lifeline every 10 or so rows. I'm personally a lifeline virgin - I jumped right in to the lace game with Birch and never looked back - in fact I even arrogantly scoffed at lifelines when it came to knitting Icarus - and either because Mim is extremely kind or else I just got very very very lucky - I never needed a lifeline for either lace project.

But Ms. Mystery - she is a-kickin' my ass - and with her I need all the help I can get.

I just might - maybe, possibly - start her tonight. Sitting comfortably propped up in bed, embroidery thread poised & at the ready to be my first lifeline somewhere around row 10 or 15 - with Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix (read by the superb Mr. Jim Dale) keeping me company while an achy hubby peacefully snoozes next to me..........

Holy Knit One Purl Two!

My sockpal socks are done. Both of them. Holy knit one purl two speedy knitting, Batman! (The blog post title refers to this lovely little snippet that Peggers e-mailed me earlier this week while I was home on full-time mommy duty. Amusing to see how we knitters are shown as total psychopaths, huh?) They are currently at home, washed and blocking. The second cuff was snipped, the top cast-on edge taken off, and then I did a horridly inexpert job of picking up the stitches. Well, I picked up the k2 stitches easily, but I'll be damned if I could find the purl stitches - so I kind of had to make it up as I went along - which took me two separate attempts - and even then I knit it once, cast off, and then glared at it, as it looked so half-assed'ly done. So I undid the cast-off, ripped it back down, and tried picking up the stitches again, doing a better job this time with the cabled stitches and did the cast-off with EZ's sewn cast-off to make sure that the edge was nice and stretchy. They still don't match perfectly, but they're much better than they were before I tried, so that's a good thing. Otherwise I think they're near twins which is always a nice thing in socks. And appropriate, seeing as how my lovely sockpal is mommy to twin girls herself!

I immediately pulled out some stash yarn and started knitting away on a new WIP - but one that I can't post about here as it is ultimately destined to be a gift knit for someone that I know reads the blog. For those of you in Ravelry (and said gift recipient is currently NOT yet in Ravelry) take a peek in my projects notebook to see it - my Ravelry username is susanb.............. However the knitting of these is going so quickly that I'm guessing I'll be finished in the next two weeks and so they will be unveiled quite quickly. So for those of you that are impatient and not yet in Ravelry, there won't be much waiting.

I am half done with the First Clue on my Mystery Stole. I'm somewhere around Row 56. I think. The First Clue goes all the way up to Row 100 - and Clue #2 comes out tomorrow. I obviously won't be ready to start the Second Clue tomorrow, but that's okay. I'm still having loads of fun with this and am just in seventh heaven with the softness and colour of the yarn.

Happily enough, the chart has also been kindly posted in written-out form - BUT - it was written out (for the first time that I've ever seen!) in the way that I write out charts - in column form instead of lengthwise. I cannot tell you how lovely this is going to be - to be able to have someone else write out these charts for me! I can most certainly work from charts - I just prefer not to. Finding this out today and seeing other folks' finished Chart 1 work in the Yahoo Group for the project has totally spurred me on to work on this tonight, if I'm able. Go on and join - you've only got until tomorrow to add you name to the group before Melanie shuts the group to all other joiners!

Other than my finished Sockpal socks, my new secret WIP, and my Mystery Stole 3 progress my other Big News is along the finishing school line of thought. I've seen several knitters out there who have spent some major money buying their own custom name tags to sew into their pieces of handknit. One of my absolute favorites, hands down, is Caro's. However while I'd love to have something similar, not only am I currently trying to pay off my current yarn bill but I'm also not sure that I really and truly know what I'd like to have on this ol' name tag. And while the name tags aren't like buying a car or anything - they're not exactly cheap. Well, once again thank goodness for the collective knowledge of knitters and crafters out there. Parikha of The Brown Sheep is both a knitter and a crafter - so she keeps her eyes on blogs that would otherwise go totally unread by yours truly.........and while reading a Shim + sons blog post from last fall she read about the option of using a custom-designed stamp (less than $5, generally), some heat-set ink pads, and twill tape and making your own............

Photo used with extremely kind permission.

Doesn't it look fantastic? I ordered the heat-set ink pads in both black and a chocolate brown, and my stamp is identical to Parikha's - { by susan}. I know - not terribly original - but I tried loads of variations - *astericks*, ::colons::, carrots>< - you name it - and nothing looked good. So I went with what I liked.

Now I just have to be patient and wait for everything to arrive in the mail.

So if you'll excuse me, I have to leave work now and go check my mailbox.

;>

A Toast!

A toast to MS3 & Collective Knowledge Between Knitters!

Thank you thank you thank you everyone to the advice about my too-short sock ribbing. As little as I was favoring the idea of unpicking that persnickety cast-on edge, even **less** was I favoring the idea of unraveling the entire sock and starting over.

No, that's not quite accurate - in fact that wasn't even an option as far as I was concerned.

But to hear that I had an even easier option - to snip a stitch one row below the cast-on, unravel, slip exposed stitches to my circs, and then just start knitting? BRILLIANCE.

And that is exactly what I shall do, once I'm finished decreasing down along the gusset of the sock (which is where my progress currently is on said knitted item) and finished with the foot and finished with the toe decrease and the kitchener graft.

Hip! Hip! Hooray! Hip! Hip! Hooray!

I get to spend the next six days out of the office and with the Munchkin - daycare is closed as she's taking a vacation up to see her family and so I get to spend some fun Mommy/Munchkin days at home, roaming town, taking in the zoo, hitting the beach, etc. I'm looking forward to it (altho' I should probably warn my husband that on Monday or Tuesday it's almost certain that I might need to go out & drink at least one cup of coffee on my own just to get a break in there somewhere! The nonstop questioning of a 2-year old can drive even the most saintly to start daydreaming about the financial viability of adding at least one soundproof room to the current layout of their house... )

While I am doing all of the fun Mommy stuff - making muffins, playing playdough, using my son as a perfect excuse to buy some Boardwalk Fries while we are down at the beach, etc. I shall also be working not only on the previously-mentioned Sockpal sock (I'm hoping to have it done before the end of next week) but I shall also be knitting away on the First Clue of Mystery Stole!

What is Mystery Stole, you ask? I cannot explain it nearly as well as Melanie can - so I'll simply point you in the right direction, urge you all to sign up, and show you my current progress to date:

These are my two MS3 swatches that I finished knitting just this very afternoon.

(Ever block a lace swatch on your office chair? No??? You should - go on - don't be afraid!)

After some pondering & some friendly consultation, I have decided in favor of the swatch on the left - which was knitted with:

.....this oh-so-lovely and HEAVENLY soft skein of Lane Borgoseia Cashwool that I ordered from The Loopy Ewe. This was my first time ever ordering from the Loopy Ewe & it was lovely and everything that everyone has raved about. I might have found my permanent online store from here on out, methinks...................

Like to see that incredible softness again?????

I'm so loving the colour I chose!

The swatch I'm choosing was knitted on size 4's - my new Crystal Palace circs, no less. Again, a splurge from the Ewe. I went with the Crystal Palace ones because the yarn was so happily inexpensive - 1400 yards of glowing "Pearl" laceweight (100% merino - Italian merino!) for only $14. Talk about a steal!

I had been anxiously awaiting my order since about, oh, 5 seconds after I placed it - and by Tuesday night I just **knew** that it should be waiting at the house. So I asked Peggers when he went home (I work Tuesdays until 9 PM) to please call me as soon as the package arrived. No call. I got home and was seriously bummed - all we had apparently gotten was some junkmail and a bill.

So I soldiered on as best I could Tuesday night, working away on my Sockpal sock, while the boys slept all around me:


In a move that should shock no-one, the dog fell asleep first.

Peggers was next. (Hmmmm....think we need a bigger couch? The man is 6'4" - that's TALL, folks!)

And giving in to peer pressure, Ella (one of two felines in the house) finally allowed herself to doze off a bit.

It was only the next morning when I went out into the front perennial bed to cut some flowers for a friend of mine that I turned around and found this on my front steps - where the postman had cleverly hid it behind a large potted trailing rosemary and some elephant ears!

Woo-hoo!!!!

So the First Clue is due out tomorrow for the stole - which means that I get to spend six happy days Playing Mommy, knitting away on a variety of very fun projects, and (hopefully) amassing some truly decent blog fodder for when I return! I also have a lovely story to tell everyone about my new label options, but that will wait for another day (and another package from the post office!)

Can you swear in a blog title?

I mean, I know it's totally ok to swear in the body of a blog posting, but what about in a blog posting title - what's the 'netiquette on that?

;>

Why, you might ask (o' my ducks) do I want to swear? Why, in the face of such general goodness & triumphant knitting progress?


One finished ribbed baby jacket....

...complete w/ intarsia heart on the back.....

.....Munchkin, wearing his new bike helmet, as he helped me to "pound" (aka knead) the dough when he and I made a triple-loaf producing batch of the world's BEST EVER Oatmeal Toasting Bread.

I might send a loaf of this to some friends to thank them for loaning us a movie, but then again I might be greedy and hoard it all for ourselves. We're having BLT's this week one night for dinner (altho' we never actually have real BLT's - Peggers normally has a BBBT {bacon bacon bacon & tomato} while I have a BCT {bacon, cheese & tomato} and the Munchkin normally has........well, maybe these days a bite of bacon, or a sliver of cheese, or a crumb or two of bread. And then after such a dramatic intake such as that he promptly asks for..............oh, cookies or muffins or juice or other things that he KNOWS full well he's not allowed to have - much less at dinnertime!) and the idea of a warm, fragrant, drippy sandwich like that doorstop'd on both ends with oatmeal bread just sounds as good as good can get.

.....my recently-organized knitting basket that I keep next to the couch, in which you can not only spy the lovely little gift (lavender 'home fragrance') that I got from a friend this weekend as thanks for letting her use some of our not-in-use baby gear (honestly, what was so hugely generous about such a loan? Let someone use your baby swing because they just had twins or let it sit in the attic and get dusty because your own screaming one is far too big to fit in it anymore - - is that even a real choice?????) but also the purple raglan sweater that I'm in the progress of happily unraveling - I told you guys I would frog it! You can likewise see the recently-purchased lime green Cotton Ease skeins with which I'm currently knitting up a half-finished Debbie Bliss boatneck baby sweater for the newest male addition to Peggers' Buddy Boy Crew..............

Admiring the pinkness & cabled twists on Sockpal sock #2.

....and then finally my most triumphant piece of the week.

I decided that given my current list of WIP's.................

* 3/4 done with Peggers' vest
* 1/2 done with the boatneck baby sweater

..................and given my current list of projects that I'm about to start.....................

* Mystery Stole #3 (more on this to come later this week!)
* Picovoli

......that I should get cracking on that second sockpal sock ASAP. So crack away I did - I cast on for it Thursday night and by last night you can see the progress I had made - the heel flap has been started!!! I was sooooo pleased with myself (To the heel flap already? On a knee-high sock???) that I tried them both on at the same time to admire them.

(Pride goeth before a fall.)

And swore.

And swore.

And took a deep breath and swore again.

Why?

Did you not see it immediately either? (It took me a bit of looking as well before I caught it.)

Let me show you again.

On the left is sock #1 with all six or so cuff rounds of RT, p2 ribbing. On the left is sock #2 with only four rounds of the same damn cuff.

What to do? What to do?????

It should be obvious to everyone by now that I am not not not ripping this out and re-knitting from the beginning. In fact after I discovered this snafu of mine last night I still continued knitting on the sock - and did another good hour or so this morning in the Toyota dealership while waiting for an oil change.

My current thought is this - can I carefully un-pick my cast on row, slide all of those stitches to my circulars, and knit, er, up the needed extra rows before casting off?

Will that work?

What say you, O Knitting Gurus?

For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her

...What a dream I had
Pressed in Organdy
Clothed in crinoline
Of smoky burgundy
Softer than the rain...
(Lyrics by Paul Simon & Art Garfunkle)

Just look at what was waiting for me when I came home last night in the evening hours......

Do you know that I cannot find that lovely Soak concoction anywhere near me? And that I'd been coveting it for far too long - but reluctant to give in and buy it (with it's resulting shipping & handling charges) on the off-chance that I wouldn't like whatever scent I had decided to go with? But now I can try! And I can try them all! {insert a shamelessly greedy mwaaahh-hah-hah-hah type laugh here...}

And !OH! the Brittany cabling needles! They're so lovely and wee yet super strong and sleek to the fingertips. I keep petting them. And taking them out of the packing and putting them back in again. And the butterfly is already a favorite of the Munchkin's - in fact minutes after opening the packing I had to wrest it from his sticky little fingertips so that it wasn't twirled around the room as he ran in circles on the living room rug in butterfly-induced happiness!

We won't even discuss how lovely those little Lifesaver candies are.

At first I thought it was my happily-anticipated package from Miriam Felton, as back at the beginning of the month I was one of three totally lucky winners in her Birthday Contest (!) so imagine my total jaw-dropping amazement when I saw that the From: name on the package was not Ms. Mim's , but instead Emily's! She enclosed - along with the goodies and the booty - a lovely little note, too, saying that it was just something meant to brighten my day after the loss of my friend, which indeed it truly did. So much so that I was able to shake off the weariness of a very long work day (working until 9 pm can be pretty ucky - but working until 9 pm when you were up the previous night with your son from 3:15 - 5:30 am is really & truly an ucky of a totally different variety!) and pull out my knitting needles, load up the last disc of the Deadwood series that I have been watching lately thanks to the loan from a friend, and knit away happily and peacefully until 11:30! This was indeed a day-brightening package and just a truly lovely, kind, and all-around wonderful thing to come my way. Much like, I would imagine, Emily to be in person. (I myself would not actually know, as unfortunately I haven't yet met her in the flesh!)

I'm mildly ashamed to say that I'm not currently working on my pal's sockpal socks - I finished the first without too much trouble at all and have cast on for the second (and am 3 rows away from finishing the ribbing and moving to the calf) and am not at all worried tha t I won't finish in time. So instead I'm totally indulging myself by swatching and knitting and ripping for a sock design that I have floating around in my head. And I have to say that this is just So Much Fun that I can hardly bring myself to stop to do other stuff like, you know - Eat. Sleep. Go to work.

I first started swatching and suchlike with the sock yarn that I intend to use on the finished product - the above luscious Apple Rose from Misty Mountain Farms, but I quickly realized my error - not only am I using size 1 needles which means weeny stitches, but due to my ripping/frogging/yanking out in frustration I'm wreaking total hell on my lovely sock yarn - so now I'm swatching and suchlike on some kitchen cotton and size 6 circular needles - faster progress, easier stitches to see/count and no worries if I fuzz to hell and back a length or two (or three or four or five) of kitchen cotton!

This current design interest is due first to Gryphon's post asking for design ideas for her yarn - and then suddenly one popped into my head. But while I can imagine a knitted item that I'd like to wear, I have literally no idea ho w to design one. This came up one day in e-conversation with Mel, as she had just heard that a design of hers was accepted at MagKnits (!), and she graciously offered to see if there was space for me to join a design blog that a friend of hers was running - the perfect place for me to post all of my stupid questions and run my ideas and problems past sympathetic, like-minded people. So join the blog I did - just last week! - and while I was browsing through Barbara Walker's first two Treasury of Knitting Pattern books (Woohoo! my library owns them both and now they're checked out to me until the middle of 2008!!!) looking for a stitch pattern to go with my original idea I stumbled across another pattern that immediately said to me STOP! KNIT ME AS A SOCK! So I figured that as a sock is smaller and as that might (?) mean that there is less room for me to screw up, a sock would be a better first design project than the sweater than I was thinking of. (But never fear, the sweater idea is still there, and I found the perfect stitch pattern and am now really, really excited about getting this all sketched and schematic'd out, too, after I'm done with the sock!)

Well, that 'tis all from me for this post - I need to go back to work and keep making all of the necessary changes to the Copyright web pages that my Dean handed to me yesterday - what fun, 'ay? Happily enough, though, I have an hour of virtual reference desk service to do right before I leave, which always means a little knitting-related time in some way, shape, or form, for myself between questions, so I most certainly have that to look forward to!!!!

Susan's (Un)Sensational Saggy Sweater

I checked my e-mail yesterday afternoon to find a posted comment from Sandy (who must have been reading some back posts) asking when I'd do a F.O. report on my green tea raglan - as I'd been obviously negligent in that area. I decided that there was no time like the present - so when I got dressed this morning I reached for my purple raglan - and within 5 minutes was mentally composing a post on why this sweater has really, really, REALLY disappointed me.

I don't think it's the pattern - I didn't discover any huge errors or suchlike in it at all, and don't get me wrong either - I love the yarn. It's softer than I ever imagined bamboo (100% bamboo!) would be - and I just adore the colour I chose. It's just that the sweater - which fits me for the first 2 minutes of wearing - starts to sag and droop and just kind of fade around me somewhere after the 2 minute, 30 second mark. (But, oh, for those first magical 90 seconds how I do love it so.....)

But two perfect minutes are just not long enough.

The first day I wore the sweater all was good - all was GREAT in fact - until I went into the bathroom and noticed that my sleeve, which had started out nicely snug and slim against the underside of my arm, was starting to bag a little bit. "Hmmmmmmmm............................" I thought. "Well........... that's probably okay - I don't want the arm to be too tight, right?", and so I didn't give it another thought.

But then about an hour later as I walked across the library I looked down and saw that the hem, which had previously been just a hand's span below my bellybutton and smoothly sleek against my pants, had stretched so much that it was starting to........sag a bit lower, and to blouse and ruffle around me. Now while I might be a bit blase about my arms, I'm anything but when it comes to my hips. No extra weight or yardage around those two monuments of mine nosireethankyoubob. So that broke my stride and made me frown a bit as I kept on walking around the building, running my little errands.

I had already come to terms with the fact that it was - due to the nature of the yarn & the needle size I had to use to get gauge - essentially see-through and reminded me more of a piece of chain mail than a sweater. I had even gone out and bought camisoles to wear under it, I had decided that I was *that* okay with that particular design element. (If you can call it such a thing.)

But for me the final straw came when, at the end of the day, I walked outside to mail something in the blue U.S. Post Office mailbox on the corner. As I walked I heard this sort of.............slapping flapping noise and looked down. My sweater hem, which had previously started out a few inches below my bellybutton and was snug around my hips was now down to the middle of my thighs and was literally flaring out like a dress. If I had just a pair of opaque tights on instead of jeans nobody would have even blinked - they'd have thought I was wearing a purple knitted minidress. Not Cool.

Not Acceptable.

So I pondered that evening what I could do to the sweater to fix it, and as I had been reading some Elizabeth Zimmerman not too long before that, suddenly I got the urge to Tell My Knitting Who Was Boss! - so I took a measurement, yanked out my scissors, and simply cut off a huge whacking piece creating a new bottom hem. I pulled out the stray pieces of yarn, shoved the raw stitches that were sticking out on a size 7 circular needle, knitted a row, and then cast off, leaving a rather silky crumpled heap of chopped yarn behind. While that has most certainly helped, I still can't quite get over the 'growth' factor of this yarn - how much it stretches upon wearing, how see-through it is knitted at this gauge, and how while it's lovely and light and silky I can't really feel any of that like I'd like to because I have to wear a camisole under it to keep from showing everyone my bra seams & hooks. Plus the neckline keeps on stretching and showing both bra straps and camisole straps after just an hour or so of wearing.

So, I'm 99.9% reconciled to frog it - my only question is do others think that this yarn, knitted at a much tighter gauge, will sag and droop just like this sweater does, and therefore should I make something completely different? Or should tightening up the gauge give the sags the old heave-ho and knitting a second sweater in a tighter fashion is certainly worth a try?

And while you ponder all of that for me, here are some pictures of what else I've been doing during my recent silent time.................

One finished sockpal sock.

One finished 'Picovoli' gauge swatch.

One almost finished Ribbed Baby Jacket for Maxine. With mods.

.........and last, but certainly not least, for Mel - pics of our beloved Takezo, the Wonder Pup.....

.....then........

............and this very morning, a few weeks after his summer haircut.

A Little Quiet Time

Things are currently a little quiet here at Chez Pointy Sticks. Partially because I'm finished with Icarus, partially because I'm diligently working away at my Sockpal's knee-highs, partially because I'm uploading loads of pictures into Ravelry and adding in projects & stash notes & lining things up in my queue. Partially because I'm starting to hit a true wall of exhaustion with all of the visiting and airplane trips and house rehabbing and suchlike that has been going on over the past 5 weeks and is still not yet quite over.

But mostly things are quiet because on Tuesday I got the stunning news that a friend & co-worker of mine died in her sleep that morning. She was only 40, and was a wonderfully vibrant and funny woman. To make matters even more horrific her husband was out of town at the time on a business trip and her death was discovered by her two young daughters, who went in to wake her up and found her.

This has shaken me deeply - and so I've retreated into silence and contemplative knitting and long walks to try and reach some sort of acceptance and peace. However I'm not there yet, so I'll most certainly be a bit more silent for a bit longer.

In the meantime here is what I am looking at while I try and find my own way through this: