Because Socks Don't Count.

Nah, they really don't!


I'm suffering from a bit of a knitting ennui at the moment - Icarus is proceeding along nicely but let's be honest - I'm at the end of Chart 1 now which is almost 400 stitches - and mostly it's straight knitting with a few yo's and ssk/k2tog's thrown in. It's a totally and completely necessary evil of the shawl, I know - and makes for a wonderful architectural "bone" structure that is a truly brilliant design stroke on the part of Ms. Mim, but it's a tad dreary to knit at the moment. I worked my way through three separate BBC America disks of Lord Peter Whimsey working on it - it's fantastic movie knitting - but as my Netflix disks are currently in the mail and I have naught to watch it's starting to wear on me a bit. Thank goodness my latest video infusion is due to arrive today, and 2 more disks should show up tomorrow.

I won't bore you with another picture of what currently looks like a blue knitted deflated balloon. It's quite tough to photograph that saggy blue silky blob in an inventive way. I think I might try pinning it out for a photo shot when I move from Chart 2 -> Chart 3, though........

I'm also working on Peggers' vest. A very nice soft Paton's tweed in a brown and orange fleck with an acid-green trim done on size 7 (8?) needles that while it is going along quickly enough is still - no matter how I try to dress it up - nothing more than a hugely mammoth swath of stockingknit stitch. I knit to something like 8 or 10" then shaped for the armholes and am now making the armholes a full 11 1/2" deep. My man - he's a big'un (6'4"!) which means size L and XL in terms of his shirts. Thank god this one isn't a full sweater - his arms are stunningly long - - even HE calls them gorilla arms!

I'm also ready to start pattern repeat #5 out of 11 on my backyard leaves scarf. While I am still truly feeling the love for the yarn, the pattern is starting to suck out my soul in little tiny bits and pieces. I think this is from doing way too much on it in 24 hours when I first started. I'm currently relying on the bus trip next weekend to & from the Maryland Sheep & Wool festival to help me out with the scarf - as I figure I can get a huge whacking amount done on that particular bus ride.

I have no picture updates on that (knitting) front either, though.

What I do have to show is my current attempt to still keep the overall number of my knitting projects at a managable level, while simultaneously boosting my current knitting mojo.

(See now where the socks start to creep in, and why they absolutely & positively don't count as a knitting 'project'???)

I went shopping at the farmer's market this weekend (yes, I was able to entice Kim to come with me, which was a lovely time - we drove, we purchased, we ate, and we let the Munchkin run around and look at "horsey hineys" in the horse trailers that were for some odd reason in the middle of town that afternoon - - and a good time was had by all - and she still got back with some time left in the day to study for her microbiology exam!) and picked up a little sock yarn from La Casa de Gryphon.....

The blue-y yellow-y green-y one is Gryphon's sock yarn in her 'Australia' colourway. One of my bestest & oldest friends was born in Australia and spent some wonderful months traveling around there a few years ago - so these will be for her. I'm pondering some sort of slipped stitch pattern to really show off the wild colours.

The hot pink & orange & yellow skein (again, via Gryphon) is for a very very good friend of mine (who I think might read this blog and so will therefore remain nameless!) who needs some cheering up via a bright pair of socks. I knitted a wee test swatch to determine the best pattern for these and the yarn really kind of..........bloomed in the washer/dryer and lost a bit of the stitch crispness, so I'm pondering some new stitch patterns to compensate for that.

The above was my final purchase - a skein of Gryphon's Traveller sock yarn in her 'China' colourway. This is for a pair of socks for an organic farmer friend of ours who is absolutely one of the nicer guys around we know - and while we've chosen to totally break from tradition this year and are NOT members of his CSA, that doesn't mean that shiitakes and bags of mixed baby lettuces and suchlike won't show up nonetheless on our doorstep....not to mention fresh eggs! As he's very very tough on his feet (and he's also on his feet all the time!) this is truly a man who needs some cushy socks for what little 'downtime' he chooses to give himself.

This Traveller yarn is exactly what is called for. VERY soft and sproingy and just luscious to the hand. And of course machine-washable, which is also very necessary given the current mental scatteredness of the recipient. I sat and stared at it and did some sock pattern searching in Knitty and came up with some things that I kind of liked and then took those patterns and modified them to what I ultimately wanted. It's a very simple idea - a k2p2 ribbing that after a few rounds* shifts to the right one stitch (repeat from *) - so that the pattern spirals down the leg. My current thinking is that I'll do that on the top of the foot as well - and will do the toe in a star decrease - that way it will remind me of a screw with the threads running down it plus the tiny little spiral at the end. And our buddy? Very much a wee bit of a 'loose-screw' kind of guy - too many years spent out in the full blazing sun farming without a hat plus some SERIOUSLY fun days as a carefree youth!

Here is where I stopped after about 45 minutes of casting-on, knitting and munching and sipping this morning (rhubarb coffee cake left over from this weekend's Sunday AM baking fest & a mug of basic java).....

.........taken mere minutes ago while walking across campus (knitting bag slung over my shoulder, scouting the whole time for a Perfect Photographing Opportunity!) for yet more coffee... It struck me as I was knitting how much this colourway actually reminded me of rhubarb - that bright oxalic green plus the splashed tinges of pink and brown - just like the lovely plant itself!

I'm quite pleased with the photo (and not just because I was able to giddily cram the entire yarn cake into this bronze cub's mouth!) but because I think it truly shows the elasticity and spring and body that is in each and every skein of this particular line of sock yarn. Knitting with this stuff is just lovely - it really reminds me of the primo stuff that I first experienced via Sundara. It would make a wonderful pair of mittens and an even better sweater, if it were dyed in (to use Purly White language) a Somewhat Solid type of way! Along those lines I have a design idea that I'm going to submit to Gryphon and will see what she thinks of it - now wouldn't THAT be fun if it worked out??????

Three Cheers!!!

Oh how lovely lovely lovely.

(A very old shot of my Icarus progress just to give you something to
look at in this otherwise picture-less post...)

I came into work this morning fresh & early (and with lovely temperate weather instead of the yucky drippy chilly mess that we've had for the past two weeks - double-hooray!!!) to find an e-mail from Froggy Dear in my inbox inviting me to the Icarus KAL. She's been super-busy with everything but has emerged from her thesis & conference hell (poor thing - she really does seem nastily busy) and checked her e-mail & as soon as she read my message promptly invited me to join. So join I did and have my first post already in place.

Hip-hip-hooray! Hip-hip-hooray! Hip-hip-hooray!

Tomorrow pretty much all day Peggers has an annual Philosophy Symposium to attend (yaaawwwwnnnnn!!!!) so I'm 95% sure that after breakfast I'm going to pack the Munchkin in his carseat & motor my way up the road to go visit Gryphon at her farmer's market yarn stall. I can hardly wait - it's supposed to be fantastic weather (and I just got paid this week!) - so it should be a great day for a road trip!!!



Hmmmmmmmmm...........I wonder if I can persuade a certain person to play hookey from schoolwork and come along to play with us?

What's an annoyed (knit)blogger to do?

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.........................



I've knit two Shetland Triangles from Interweave's Scarf Style. I'm 3 pattern repeats into the second half of my Backyard Leaves Scarf from the same book.

(Left: Shetland knit out of stash yarn for my grandmother's 90th birthday. Right: Shetland knit out of Artyarns Royal Silk as a birthday gift for the friend of a friend. Center: Backyard leaves photographed Easter weekend in - where else? - my in-law's backyard...)

....and I'm also 2 e-mail requests in to join the Scarf Style KAL blog and have yet to be answered.


Likewise I've sent two e-mail requests to join the Icarus KAL blog and haven't gotten a reply back there, either! It's been maybe - oh - two weeks for both, and while I went to both of the blog owner's individual pages and saw that yes indeed - one chica has been very busy with thesis and conference and suchlike, I had imagined that she'd have been able to at least reply with a "I'm busy, but I'll get to you eventually" message. The other chica doesn't seem to be busy - 20+ weeks pregnant as all get-out - but not frantically busy like the first.

(Icarus, photographed in the middle of typing this post - somewhere around the 4th or 5th repeat of Chart #1. Doesn't matter, really, as I'll probably do at least 2 more repeats before moving to Chart #2 just for good measure...)

What's the etiquette on this one? Post a comment on the main KAL blog(s) somewhere asking to be added, explaining that the individual e-mail request didn't work? Post a comment on the owner's individual blog asking to be added? Just wait and sit on my hands? Drop it and just knit the damn scarf and shawl and be done with it????


On better news, I am as psyched as all get-out about Sockpalooza 4. I already know what socks I want to knit for my Pal - the ones from Handknit Holidays - but in normal calf length instead of the over-the-knee extravaganza that the original 'recipe' calls for.....

(ohhhhhhhhhhhhh............aren't they BEAUTIFUL????)

I really, really hope when I get my Pal's info that I find out that these sort of socks would be acceptable! My heart isn't **totally** set on knitting them for my Pal (if Pal says no, then I'll knit them for another friend of mine!) but I'm totally drooling over this particular part of the sock and I've just GOT to knit it.........





Tell me that isn't one of THE coolest heelflaps that you've ever seen!?!?!?!?!?!?!



p.s. did I mention that I get to go to Sheep & Wool this year? It's only about 2 hours away - so it's a cakewalk in terms of travel. I'm truly truly excited about it, even if it does currently seem an eternity away at this very second....

p.s. OMG it's here! It's time!!!

Oh! oh! oh! look at what I just signed up to do!!!!!!!

(along with - as of 9 AM today - a whopping 725 other insane sock knitters!)



Oh yeah, baby, I've been waiting a very long time to do this!

Jumping Across the Pond

I have been coveting (majorly, majorly coveting!) Skinny Rabbit's knits for ages now - ever since I randomly stumbled across her blog more than a year ago.

The first thing to do it for me was THIS - her ribbon cardigan with 3/4 sleeves from Phildar's Eté 2004 pattern book, using this really cool (but now, sadly, discontinued) ribbon yarn by Phil Ruban in this incredible apricot colour 'Cuivre'. I did a frantic search for the pattern, and read somewhere that the Canadian shop Knit n' Tyme carries Phildar mags, and when I e-mailed them they quite kindly told me that yes, they did carry that particular issue and that yes, the sweater I was coveting was in it. And then they told me that this issue was only in French. And people, languages are not my strong point. Without coffee I even struggle with English in the morning - just as Peggers. (Or, as he'd probably quite kindly point out, I also struggle with it after a single glass of red wine - case in point? Last night after dinner - which involved one single solitary glass of Merlot - and a few errands out with a very very very wired Munchkin.)

A photo of the lovely - sadly, now impossible to find - Phil Ruban ribbon yarn. A quick Google search brought this to me from a 2005 (!) stash sale that is now long long long over.
The irony that pains me particularly is that this is even the exact colour that I dream of......

So after realizing that the Phildar issue was in French I simply gave up on it and contented myself to just read Ms. Rabbit's blog entries and willed myself to Let Things Go. Of course, I kept returning to the pictures over and over and over again, but I resisted. Oh, how I resisted. Then after I met Gryphon and listened to her talk and post about knitting and designing her own pieces, I realized that I could probably knit and design the thing myself from my basic knowledge of how knitted pieces are made and fitted together, with a knitted leaf/lace pattern put along the edge of the cardi all on my very own. So the pain eased a wee little bit.

Then yesterday, realizing that because Fluffa/Skinny Rabbit does not in fact have an RSS feed and so is not something that I can add to my list of updatable blog links, I went over and browsed her back back back postings. And read all about the incredibly adorable intarsia linen jacket that she knitted her little boy (she's SUCH a good mommy - she knits him a jacket every year to go back to school in!), and at the bottom of the post she mentions this really neat zipper facing trick that she learned the previous year while making her son's knitted cotton jacket. And a nifty zipper trick with facings ("Facings?" I wondered to myself, "what are those???") is something that I was interested in reading about. Heck, this woman is so funny and entertaining when she writes that I even read eagerly about her afternoon snacks - she's that engrossing a person! (Hey, an American ex-lawyer who moved to France, got married and had an adorable son, and is now enrolled in fashion school? With a perfect bod for draping clothes on and a wack dance style? Engrossing is too weak a word for her!!!!)

So dutifully and happily I clicked on the post to read about her son's cotton jacket.

And totally fell in LOVE.

An asymetrical jacket done in 3x1 ribbing that melts into plain stocking knit on the front panels, with this wonderful collar that stands up just the wee-est bit and a zipper'd front. Ribbed sleeves. It just screamed out to me to make it for the Munchkin - - he so adores wearing his little jackets and just loves loves loves practicing with his zipper. Plus it would make me so incredibly happy to knit him something else other than the rooster sweater that I finished for him when he was about 6 months old (I made it in a 2-year old size) and haven't made him a thing since.

Plus I have this really cool Katia (?) yarn that I got on a major whack discount from The Fine Needle about, oh, 2 years ago and it would be perfect for a jacket. It's this funky wool/something blend, where the something is this sort of ribbon thing that twists around the wool in an acid yellow green flecked with orange, brown, and red. Totally something that a child could wear as a jacket but nobody else could wear as a sweater because it would just be Too Bizarre. Plus it's a bit stiff, which is even better in terms of jacket & not in terms of sweater.

So I did it. I popped right over to Knit n' Tyme and found the Phildar mag with the asymetrical jacket pattern in it and bought it, despite my total lack of French-speaking abilities. (A knitters dictionary in multiple languages is now apparently on my knitting purchase list!!!! AHEM! PEGGERS! Major mother's day present idea just stated here! Pay attention, Mr. Buggs!!!!) I also went out last night after dinner (and - hehehe - the afore-mentioned glass of red wine) and bought a copy of Katharina Buss's Big Book of Knitting because the Rabbit also mentions this several times in many of her posts - including this one with the cool trick with the zipper facings.

And lemmie' tell you, that Rabbit is one woman who turns out some muy polished looking knitted pieces. She's totally the boss of her knitting - and isn't afraid to rip out, re-work, or re-stitch something if it doesn't look exactly SO. And while my basic knitting skills are certainly up to snuff after all this time, my finishing skills need some boosting - so I figure this is about the time that I need to work on them - and this might just be the book to help me to do so.

I realized this for several reasons, but the most major one being that I finished & seamed & wove-in the ends on my Green Tea Raglan sweater last night and am wearing it today. And while it looks lovely (.....albeit long! See how the pic in Interweave shows a cute little jean-clad backside peeking from beneath the sweater? My sweater - knitted most carefully to the measurements in the mag!!!! - covers the back pockets of my pants. Comes to the ball & socket joint in my hip. Is most certainly tunic length rather than slightly-long-sweater-length. What to do about this, I am not certain at all.) it doesn't look nearly as professional as I'd like. I don't think it looks Home-Ec from 8th grade, now, mind you - but it doesn't look as polished as it could.

So 2007 might very well end up being the Year Of Learning Finishing Techniques here at Chez Pointy Sticks...................

Easter TONS

....tons and tons and tons of knitting was done this weekend, that is!

(Despite 6" of freakish snow, a 5-6 hour power outage,
and not being at home for all of Saturday and half of Sunday)

I'm actually a bit amazed myself at how much was finished! And I'm a s-l-o-w knitter compared to many (being the 'grabber' type knitter instead of the continental or other styles of knitters makes me considerably slower than most, I've always thought) - - yet despite my turtle-like tendencies with the needles here is what I managed to work on this weekend:



I finished my Green Tea Raglan and blocked it and seamed it all together. All is left is to finish weaving all of those hellish ends. I have also tried it on & happily enough it fits (!) altho' I do have to say in the sake of modesty I will buy a cami to wear underneath it before I actually sport it outside of the house.








I also did a ton of knitting on the Backyard Leaves Scarf using Gryphon's amazing yarn. This stuff is pure gold, lemmie' tell you - very very very soft (and passed my patented sniff test with its very first whiff!) and just lovely lovely lovely colours all melded and melted together. It is actually due to Gryphon's lovely yarn that I credit actually finishing the first half of the scarf, as I rapidly grew tired of the pattern repeat after about, oh, the 6th one. Finishing those last two (you do 11 repeats before finishing off the pointy end) took some serious discipline! I'm guessing, however, that my lack of enthusiasm was not because of a failure in the scarf pattern, but rather because I did all of this scarf knitting in a day and a half. I will cast on for the second half very soon - I have determined that I will finish one pattern repeat every day at the very least - which means that the scarf will be more of less done in a week and a half. PLENTY of time to make my Mother's Day deadline!

I interspersed the scarf knitting with some Icarus knitting - -

(my progress shot taken outside Saturday afternoon during the power outage!)

- - my Jaegerspun Zephyr from Sarah's Yarns came stunningly soon after ordering it - - I ordered it around 1PM on a Thursday and it was literally on my doorstep time-stamped by the UPS guy at 12:40 PM the very next day. Talk about the speed of light! The yarn is wound for you by the Sarah folks - - they take their huge-mongous cone of Jaegerspun and wind off 2 ounces for you and then sell you just that 2 ounces at whatever percentage of the total 1-pound cone price would be. In my case that came to just $5 and some change per two-ounce ball. Can you believe it? Apparently they're a bit controversial in the yarn-retail world because of this practice, but as a person who literally snorts out loud when I read People magazine or US magazine and see the prices on those "designer" bags or "designer" jeans that celebrities wear ($700?????? For a pair of JEANS?????? Unless they magically turn my ass into a size 6 and do the dishes for me every night, I'm hard-pressed to shell out $70 for a pair of jeans!!!) this discount pricing model sits just fine with me, thankyouverymuch!

(Above is a progress shot taken this morning - I've finished the first repeat of Chart 1...the outside shot above is much much much more true to colour than this particular shot - something about the indoor light plus the grey-ish background - that is - it's grey in real life! - just washes out the intense intense intense robin's egg dark blue that is truthfully is...)

The bugger part of the Icarus story is that I also ordered an Addi bamboo size 3 (24") needle to knit it on, but decided to go w/ the size 3 Addi (16" - one of the circs that I use for socks) that I had to get started. You know - starteritis - I totally couldn't wait until the longer needle arrived in the mail......until yesterday when it actually did arrive and I slapped my forehead in disgust. I already HAVE a size 3 Addi (24") needle (turns out those sock needles that I bought were in fact ALL 24" long!) - in fact, that was exactly what I had been knitting the sucker on in the first place!!! So now I have three Addi naturas size 3 in 24 inches. I just didn't bother to check & measure (or heck, even READ the packaging!) before my silly self went crazy online ordering with reckless abandon. So now what do I do? Do I try and send it back? Do I even think that 24" is remotely long enough for such a huge shawl in the first place - so do I try and send it back and ask them to send a 36" long needle instead? Do I offer it in a swap to a friend? Do I burn it, offering it up to the gods in an attempt to prevent future Online-Knitting-Supply-Ordering Stupidity???


This morning I also started organizing my current batch of projects. Below what you see is nothing other than my patented "circular needle method" - which for me means that anything remotely small that I knit on a circular needle I stuff in one of these $1 Target bags that I bought over the summer and keep labeled (and therefore organized, as in my world this counts as organized!) with little ring tabs. While I haven't yet started Seraphim, what I currently have in that particular bag is a freshly-wound yarn cake of the Handpaintedyarn skein (didn't like the skein too much, but love love love the yarn cake!) and a pair of Knit Picks Options, size 5.

Pointy little suckers, those.

Ketchup

Sorry - I'm hungry - that should really be *catch up*.

Quickly, as I've got about 15 minutes to myself before I need to run - so just the basics:


My Green Tea Raglan bamboo sweater: I'm down to the last few rows on the front - and already the back & sleeves are done. I'm so excited about this - my first adult sweater (for me!), and out of cool nifty bamboo nonetheless. I'm going to block it and seam it and try it on before deciding if I should knit the little belt or not.

The weather here is finally turning nice (with this weekend being a nasty, cold, drippy, wet exception!) and so I'm anticipating lots of fantastic wearing of this perfect mid-weight sweater in the next few months.





Next, I have a picture of Gryphon's yarn that she so kindly hand-dyed me to knit the Backyard Leaves scarf with. Isn't it AMAZING?????????

It should arrive in the mail sometime this week, and as soon as I'm finished with the sweater (Friday? Saturday? Sunday?) I'm going to start right in on it. Looking at the lace chart I know already that I'm going to have to translate the chart from chart form into column form instructions, but that's okay.


Icarus:

Yes, I'm going to knit Icarus, but not for my retiring co-worker, but rather for my wonderful Grams who I am going to see in May. I **just** ordered 2 skeins of Zephyr Wool-Silk in Agean Blue (shown obligingly in the pic below from Miss Ewe Knits' Blog) from Sarah's Yarns and lo and behold not 5 minutes later (!!!!) I received an e-mail telling me that the yarn has been shipped via UPS Ground and they even included a tracking number. Holy shit!!!! I also ordered not the Addi Lace Turbos that you see in the picture below as they're sold out pretty much everywhere I quickly looked but instead a pair of Addi Natura circs, size #3 from Angelika's Yarn Store, where I've heard the shipping is almost as equally fast! I'm a bit bummed that I couldn't find the Addi Lace needles, but as I love love love the Addi Natura needles and know that I'll use these for ever and ever and ever I'm not really that bummed. Besides {snicker, snicker} I know that once the Addi Lace needles stop being *the* thing that everyone wants I'll buy several pairs eventually!




And what, you might ask, am I going to do with the yarn I bought earlier that I had intended for Icarus?

SERAPHIM, BABY, SERAPHIM!!!!!

Here is a beautiful example that I found on Knit/Wit's blog via her posting in the Seraphim KAL (which I joined, right along w/ the Icarus KAL, of course!) - she did hers in KnitPicks Gloss - I think that this is going to be incredible in the hand-dyed deep blue laceweight that I got for my co-worker!


Well, my 15 minutes are up - time to grab my book and run over to my trusty reading spot so that I can digest my necessary three chapters in the time allotted before I get to run back and sit desk for two hours.

The good part of today, though? Getting to have dinner tonight at a local Vietnamese/Thai place w/ a candidate (never met the candidate & never eaten at the new restaurant!) and then green tea raglan knitting once I get home and bath/bedtime is over! Peggers bought the Keven Smith 2-disk set (his tour around various college campuses) and we watched part of it last night - it is HYSTERICAL! Fantastic knitting watching - great listening, loads of laughs and interesting stories, plus as it's so interesting it keeps me awake - and therefore knitting! - long past my normal bedtime of 10:15 PM!

A Hookup Needed

I kept thinking about this idea all weekend, and mused to myself that I sounded like a druggie......

"I need the good stuff!"

"I need a hookup."

"Hey man, do you have any of the primo stuff that I can score?"

(Gryphon's hand-dyed silk in 'Foxtrot')

...however in my case what I need is 450-500 yards of worsted-weight yarn in a subtly variegated shade suitable for a leaf-themed scarf.


You see, sitting at home 2 weekends ago I was feeding the Munchkin bites of mushroom & cheese omelette (he out-ate me by about 2 helpings!) and listening to Sunday Edition on NPR when I heard a news story about a local-ish woman whose son had been killed over in Iraq...........and how the first anniversary of his death was coming up on Mother's Day. Sitting there listening to her talk about her loss, and her struggle to not only come to terms with such a impossible thing but to also how she tried to console her remaining two children as they tried to figure out how to live with such a loss absolutely crushed me. Sitting there with my little guy eagerly eating mushrooms and proudly showing me how he could fork up a mouthful with only a little bit of spillage (cutlery skills are high-up on his list of Things I'm Proud Of at the moment!) I sat and listened and just cried. Particularly on hearing how this mom found out the news of her son when some Marines walked up to her while she was gardening outside on a lovely spring day.............and thought how that all too easily could have been me. How maybe possibly if the Munch decides to go against most of what I believe in (being raised a Quaker and therefore quietly and vehemently anti-fighting) and what his father would undoubtedly council - how it could even actually be me someday.



So I tried to think of what to do. I just couldn't get that image out of my mind - that of a woman working in her garden, surrounded by the warm smell of dirt and seeing little fat seedlings pushing out of her garden, having these strange men walk up to her - and having her probably know immediately what it meant the second she saw them.

So - lacking anything else to do - I thought I'd knit her something. I figured that anyone who was working in her garden in May was probably a basic nature-ish person - and so something nature-ish based would be appreciated and possibly even worn. Which made me think of leaves and trees and shoots - - which made me think of the Backyard Leaves scarf by Annie Modsitt in Interweave's Scarf Style book. I looked through my stash, and didn't see anything that would fit - as this is an Important Knitting Project and none of my acrylic-ish beginning knitter yarn that I have steadfasted refused to throw out and so still remains in my stash even came close to being nice & important enough.

(Another hand-dyed silk of Gryphon's - this one her 'Flamenco' colourway)

So what I am doing is asking for any and all recommendations & potential yarn 'hookups' that I can get. I know what they recommend for the scarf, but I think that the Karabella Aurora 8 is only ho-hum when placed against what I **could** knit the scarf out of. See Gryphon's examples for what I mean.......altho' there are loads of folks out there (Jessie, Sundara, Handpainted Yarn, etc.) who could also serve as excellent examples of the kind of truly primo yarn that I'm talking about. (I'm just guessing that Gryphon won't sue me for pirating her images to use in this post without first asking for permission, hence why I went and shamelessly stole images from her Etsy shop!)

;>

A set of retirement wings

One of the more wonderful & lovely members of my library is retiring in a year or so - - and I've been looking into and talking about making her a knitted shawl for the past - oh - 6 months or so. However nothing ever hit as being "perfect" and so no decisions were made. Until today.

Brooklyntweed posted about some hand-dyed yarn of his from the Handpaintedyarn.com folks - - so I went over there to explore and clicked on the 100% wool laceweight stuff..........and oh oh oh look what I found:


Isn't it just BEAUTIFUL? 950 yards and $5.95. Can you believe it?

And what - you might ask - is it eventually going to be transformed into?

Icarus, of course!

To be 100% sure that I'd have enough to make a BIG shawl I purchased two skeins. Shipping included it came to $16. I laughed - seriously - the food purchase I made this week for my 4-committee group to consume during 10 telephone interviews came to $36.

Ohhhhhhhh but this should be fun to knit - and even better, with no deadline looming it'll be a fairly leisurely knit as well!

Wee Tiny

My sock is done! I knitted it last night while watching about 1/2 of The Holiday (Jude Law, Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, & Jack Black). I'd only give this movie a B - and that's because Kate Winslet is in it - - otherwise I'd give it a C. Jude Law does okay - but it's a role that I just can't get my head around him in because in the movie he's actually a decent guy - and his escapades in the Real World suggest otherwise! Cameron Diaz is ditzy and far too cookie-cutter stereotypical - annoying, almost. Jack Black is Jack Black - not given enough screen time to actually become the character in the actual movie - and while I like Jack Black well enough, he can be annoying in large doses. Kate Winslet is lovely as always - I wish that she lived in town so that she and I could go for coffee and chat, and I could hang out at her house & try and figure out how she brushes/styles her hair so that it always looks so good without actually looking like she spent too much time on it (in my world, spending more than 5 minutes on your hair is Too Much Time) - and maybe even raid her closet.........you know?

But anyway - I digress.

I knitted the sock first on size 1 dpns, then after wrestling with them for about 10 minutes (keeping in mind the entire time that the whole knitting exercise was only supposed to take about 60 minutes!) I ripped them out & off and re-did the whole thing on two circs and was much much happier. I did a basic k1tbl,p1 ribbing for the top then did the leg plain then switched back to dpns and did a garter-stitch heel then turned the heel then used the dpns to pick up the stitches for the gussets (and here I probably would change the pattern for myself and next time pick up 7 instead of 6 stitches, as I had a hole at the top of the gusset which I can sometimes kinda' avoid by picking up an extra stitch just to be extra careful at that super-tricky spot) but then switched back to circs to finish off the foot and the toe.

I used some leftover hand-dyed Sundara sock yarn in Dusk. Hey, if you're going to do a swap, better do it w/ the good stuff, right?



Then this morning I came to work and wrote a nice little letter to my swap pal and addressed the envelope and sealed it and then spent an hour out at the reference desk where I actually had a chance to look at blogs again for the first time since last Friday............and when I got to Emily's blog I realized that -DUH!- I had totally forgotten to take pictures of it. So I went back to my desk, hauled out my letter opener, and staged a few photos, then tucked the sock back away yet again and sealed the huge slice in the envelope with some good old sticking tape!

Man O Man O Man but this week has been a brain-frying sort of a time.................

I shall mail the wee tiny package off to it's intended pal tomorrow - oh what fun what fun what fun - and what a lovely lovely lovely Emily to come up and then also be willing to coordinate all of this!

I'm going to go now and post my picture to her Flickr group - and then go home and start watching my mailbox!

:)

I really should be working.......

.....but I'm not.



Today is the Munchkins' birthday - it is so so so hard to believe that my little colic-ridden bundle is 2 years old! Old enough to demand birthday cake at the merest hint of a icing-laden sugary slice! Old enough to sleep through the night - even if he chooses not to on an almost-nightly basis. Old enough to try to put his own socks & shoes on. (He doesn't succeed at it, though.) Old enough to pretend that the rolled-up bamboo place mat is a sandwich and the coaster is a pancake.

This was maybe, oh, at 4 days old.
Never, ever since has he again been this quiet.

So this afternoon I'm not working. I'm catching up on major, major blog reading after an insanely busy week & an insanely busy morning. I have pushed so much work around and finally off of my desk today plus done so much online grading & reading that now my eyes actually hurt. So what I'm going to do is post here, then leave work a bit early so that I can hit the health-food store and then go and get the little wee one - if you can call a 2-year old (who is both so tall & so verbal that he is routinely mistaken for a 4-year old child, even by those who have children themselves) 'wee' and take him home & play with him & read to him to his heart's content because it is - you know - his birthday. And if you can't have a fairly decent day on your birthday - particularly at this young an age! - when can you????

But first, I post.

I post of All Things Heather & her drive for donations to raise money to buy books for a South African school. As both a reading freak in my own right plus a militant mommy who makes the Munch read (not that I have to make this child read - he demands it on a nonstop basis!) plus a librarian plus someone who used to live in Botswana for a bit (the country above South Africa) - this donation was a no-brainer. And getting yarn as a result? A total bonus - but I would have done it w/out the yarn.........

Next I post of Emily.

Who sent me a lovely little wee-est treasure in the mail. I was overwhelmed last night when I got home from work (the Munch was still sleeping when I went to get him at his daycare provider's house - yesterday was Dance Day for the kids at daycare who are old enough, which correspondingly meant a very very late nap for the little guy and not nearly enough sleep!) with temper tantrums and making dinner and just being exhausted in general, so I didn't open Emily's padded envelope until today. I made myself wait and let the excitement build - plus I wanted to open it in an environment where it was nice and quiet and I could actually read Emily's letter and understand it instead of being interrupted every other word with requests for reading yet another Maisie story, more milk, dump truck location clarifications, or comments about the dog barking.

My sock. My lovely, soft sock that is knitted so

well - even at this small size - that it has no holes in the gusset!!!

It is lovely and beautiful and too cute for words - and this from someone who is most certainly not a fan of things generally considered twee. I have it currently very very carefully tucked in my front pocket - both because I like to reach in my pocket and feel that it is there, and also because I am showing it to - generally - every single person I see today. I ran to E's blog and read all of the posts of hers lately that I had missed and signed right up for her Wee Tiny Sock Swap. I am so excited, I can hardly wait. I'm hoping to get an International Swap Pal. Just because I love those funky stamps & foreign accents are just SO cool, are they not??????

So now I have posted. So now I go. This weekend should be just lovely - warm warm warm (well, warm considering what we've been putting up with lately!) and time alone w/ the Peggers and time to garden and time to knit and maybe even some time to throw open the windows and doors and air out the house and let in the Fresh Spring Air!

(a girl can always hope, can't she?)

Anatomy of a Sunday

8-ish AM: Wake up and exchange pleasantries with Munchkin & Peggers. Agree that while today looks quite cold, it still seems like it will be - ultimately - a Very Nice Day.

9-ish : Roll ourselves downstairs.

9:30-ish: Pancake breakfast, courtesy of Daddy/Peggers!

10:30: With grocery list in hand make our way to grocery store for week's worth of shopping. On list are ingredients for lunch this afternoon with Kim!!!

11-ish: Standing in grocery store watching husband get very Very VERY frustrated due to overwhelming number of absolutely stupid shoppers all getting in our way. Look for refrigerated pizza crust but can only find frozen. Figure that I can make it all work in the end by lunchtime, regardless.

11:15: Realize that the frozen pizza crust takes 4-6 HOURS to thaw........................Kim is due over for lunch in 45 minutes. Begin to majorly panic.

12 noon: Crust is thawed thanks to some major quick work by Peggers - ragu is simmering on stove top & oven is pre-heated. Still, major major panic.

12:05 PM: Kim shows up & pizza goes in the oven - springform pan - double-crust stuffed with with ricotta/mozzarella/parmesan then topped with home-made ragu composed of chicken sausage, mushrooms, celery, carrots, garlic, onion, and tomato. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes then top with loads of cheese and bake for another 20 minutes.


1:10: We sit down to eat, and Munchkin has a few bites of his lunch then gets too tired & asks to be brought up to his crib for naptime. We continue to eat double-crust stuffed pizza after he retires.

2:05: Leave for the Barnes & Noble knitting group meeting.

2:30: Meet Gryphon and lovely baby Lia. As my friend Rachel had told me in an e-mail, Gryphon really & truly is far too lovely a human being to have recently had a baby - if not for Lia strapped to her front in a baby sling I wouldn't have believed it myself! (3 months after the Munchkin was born, I wasn't calm, collected, happily knitting in a group of women at roughly the speed of light, I was frantically pushing my screaming bundle of colic around in a stroller - hair unwashed - wearing the same clothes that I'd had on the day before - wondering if things would ever get better and terrified that things in fact were as good as they were going to actually get for a long long long time.....)

4:15: Inquire as to the time & realize that the hour and a half that I told Peggers I'd be gone has stretched to two hours and fifteen minutes. Invite Kim & Gryphon & Lia back to my house for tea/more chat.

5:00: Kim takes off to finish her homework.

5:15: I start making dinner - marinated steak & potato soup with spinach.

5:45: After talking her ear off, my manners finally catch up with my brain and I think to offer Gryphon something to drink. Nursing mothers = fluid depletion = MAJOR THIRST. To think that I could have forgotten this is something that I was quite embarrassed about!

6:15: Gryphon and Lia pack themselves up and leave, after lovely lovely lovely talk between the two of us that covered topics from knitting to mothers to babies to Americans to genetic biology to co-workers to silent films.

6:17: Munchkin & I wave goodbye to Gryphon & Lia as they drive home.

6:18: Walk into living room and stare at my husband in disbelief. "How on earth could I have not thought to invite Gryphon for dinner????? I stood there and cooked an entire meal in front of her and never even had the intelligence to ask her about it. I have the manners of a basket of dirty laundry these days!!!!!!!!!"

7:15: Take soup pot off stove & walk it to center of dining room table. Open bag of pre-washed spinach, dump in pot, and stir in. (Heat from simmering broth wilts spinach just enough so that spinach is cooked but not overly so!)

7:16: Set table, pour drinks & round up Munchkin & Peggers for dinner.

7:20: Finish settling Munchkin & get him eating his applesauce & crackers & blow on his soup to cool it.


7:21: Peggers spoons up his first bite of soup as I move to do the same.




7:21.5: "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS???????????????????????????"


7:22: Peggers looks up at me & promptly spits out his mouthful of soup.

My first thought: Oh lord, it was hiding in the bag of spinach.

My second thought: Thank GOD I didn't invite Gryphon to dinner!!!!

7:32: Eat roll & half a hot-dog as rest of meal - Peggers eats a bowl of Cheerios.

8:15: Put Munchkin to bed.

8:35: Drink two glasses of much-needed wine and eat half a container of chocolate ice cream as proper dinner while watching Stranger Than Fiction with Peggers .

10:15: Bed, after a very very very strange day.

The Fastest Shawl in the East

I was sitting around about two weekends ago, mere hours off the high of ordering two sweater's worth of yarn in one slightly expensive sitting, when I decided that I needed a teeny weeny project - something to knock off quickly and keep me on my knitting high between ordering the yarn and actually having it show up on my doorstep.

So I focused on my paternal grandmother - Elaine - who had her 90th birthday just this past fall - and went looking in my stash. I dug out the remaining hand-dyed silk/rayon blend that I had ordered from Interlacements last year for K's clapotis and did some mental reviewing of patterns that I had wanted to try out, and so settled easily on the Shetland Triangle from Wrap Style. Knitted so amazingly by Brooklyntweed in some Sundara hand-dyed worsted-weight yarn. (No wonder, huh, that these two talented people could combine to make such a stunning end product!)

I was - of course - impatient as anything to start it, but I waited until Sunday morning rolled around and then checked to see when the local public library opened to check out their copy (which I knew that they had!) - but when I saw that their Sunday AM opening was in fact 1 PM I balked and so grabbed the Munchkin (Peggers was sleeping in late that morning thanks to extreme kindness on my part!) and we hightailed it to Barnes & Noble. Luckily for my bottom bank line they did not have a copy in stock, so I cooled my heels until 1 PM at which point I flew to the library, snagged their copy, flew back home and started knitting! (And N.B. - I'm glad I did wait until I got the library's copy, as other than this particular shawl there is nothing - and I mean N O T H I N G in this book that I like even remotely!!!)

I cast on for the shawl on size 7 needles around 1:30 Sunday afternoon - and finished the shawl Tuesday evening after I got home from work - taking a break only to suffer from a 36 hour stomach flu that rendered me incapable of anything more than one single line of knitting Monday afternoon on the couch! I knitted until I thought it was large enough, realized I had gone one pattern repeat too far (leaving myself far too little yarn to finish the 14-row edging chart and cast-off!) and so ripped back easily, picked up my stitches, and happily did the 14-row edging chart and then cast off with just a wee bit of yarn left to spare.

Of course it looked like a bunched up piece of colourful netting when I finished...but I did my normal thing. Soaked it in Eucalan & cold water (I know it isn't wool, but the lavendar Eucalan like I've got is the loveliest thing out there so I use it regardless!), then pinned it out on a towel on the bed like I normally do (blocking wires and loooootttsss of T-pins!)

and left it overnight to dry and once again the Lace Gods smiled down on me.....and voila! From a tangled netting-like mess to a lovely shiny gleaming shawl that was popped right in the mail and sent off to lovely Grandma Elaine who happily received it just a few days later and called me right away to thank me.Nothing like a happily-received gift knit that was made in 2-3 days out of stash yarn!