A Week Or So In Stitches

I have had precious little to say, or rather, precious little to say that anyone is lining up to hear. Cheyenne left us on Saturday, October 8th. I had the following week off so my Mom was able to stay in Suffolk and grieve in private. I was able to stay home and do the same.

I worked through it in yarn mostly (and some beer, I don’t deny it), and I talked about memories of her as a puppy and found old photos of her playing with me in the big snowstorm of 2000. I am mostly better now. No more crying jags. I still catch myself turning in the computer chair to look behind me where her bed used to be to check on her. I was looking for the gate to the backyard to be closed when we pulled in the driveway after work yesterday. I keep catching myself thinking “I wonder if I need to let Cheyenne out” from time to time.

Time, prayer, and knitting can do a lot for one’s soul.

I started with Arroyo.
Yarn: KnitPicks Chroma (New England colorway) (one ball and I had some leftover)
Needles: 5mm (US8)
No modifications. This knit up very fast and I loved the short row shaping. I especially love how the colors turned out. However, that said, I had real problems with that Chroma ball. 4 rows into the scarf, the yarn was broken. Not knotted, completely broken. Then there were 3 more places in the ball where the yarn had been knotted to a new yarn, and they didn’t even try to keep the colors together. Fortunately, the abrupt shifts in color were less noticeable in the finished product than I feared they would be. The colors were fabulous, but I gave the yarn only 2 stars on Ravelry because of the issues I had with this ball.

It was a very quick knit, but I was highly focused on it as well. Cast on on Friday morning and cast off Sunday night.

After that, still being hung up on half-moon scarflettes, I immediately cast on Annis.

(Check out my model! She had been playing dress up just before.) Sadly, I have no decent pictures yet. I only have photos from blocking, and it was shockingly difficult to get any light on the shawl.

I blocked it on my yoga mats over a thick carpet. That worked okay, but I really need to look into getting some of those interlocking foam floor pads like they use in kids’ playrooms.

Yarn: Malabrigo Lace (Lettuce colorway) (also did not use the whole ball)
Needles: 6mm (cast on only) and 5mm
The only modification was I used the Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off since that had worked so well on Arroyo, but I think now I sort of regret it. I think a less stretchy bind off might have allowed for more curve. Or it might not have. It was very difficult to block it in the shape I wanted. I think I would be more in love with it except that it rolls up really badly. The curl did not block out. Stockinette is known for its tendency to curl and one of the things I loved about Arroyo was the garter stitch body, which patently does not curl. I almost modified the body of Annis with garter instead of stockinette stitch, but I thought it would look more elegant in stockinette.

It does, but curling is definitely not elegant. It is still very pretty, very light weight, and the yarn developed a nice halo that compliments the pattern nicely.

I hope to get some pretty, natural light photos soon.

I am pretty much half-moon scarfed out for a while. I was going to knit this third one for me (note, the blog is mostly in Russian, but there is an English translation of the pattern on Ravelry) with some recently finished handspun fingering weight wool, but I have a lot of Christmas knitting to catch up on. Probably by the time that is all finished, I will be ready for another scarflette. I really like the feather stitch pattern and in the peacock teal handspun, it will be a striking project, I think.

I have another project to cast on tonight though. Pictures soon, I hope.

One Down

I want to thank everyone who has contributed to the Worlds Finest team and our efforts to raise money for the local Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) programs. Combined, between the donations made directly to the team and those that were made in Grace’s name, we have raised over $350!

The first of the April SCSC socks is done; I decided in the past day to make a major modification to the pattern. I decided to do a picot edged cuff. Until now, I have yet to knit a pair of socks yet that didn’t have a ribbed cuff, and while ribbed cuffs generally look nice and do a swell job in helping to hold up your socks, they just struck me as being far too dull to bring this flashy pair of socks to a close. This blog was vastly helpful in assisting me on choosing my binding off method.

And, because I have an appreciation for a view of the wrong-side of colorwork projects, I give you the inside:

In spite of all the attention I have been giving to the socks, my brain has been in a lace mood. I haven’t touched Freya since Wednesday, though I hope to give it some attention soon, but in the meantime, I have spent a lot of time looking at lace projects and shawls, and dreaming of future projects.

The Spring/Summer issue of Knitty debuted recently (this week I assume), and I fell pretty hard for Lilah in this issue. I like the idea of the two-toned shawl, but I don’t like the fact that the beautiful edgework becomes invisible with the transition from white to black. I will either knit it in a solid color, or dye it myself, ombré style.

I still fantasize about knitting Shipwreck again, but my list of shawls I want to knit is so long that it is hard to want to set aside the couple of months it would take to complete it, when I could be knitting something completely new to me. Here are just a few that I have been wanting to knit for a while.

Rona Lace: a stunning circular shawl I have been fantasizing about for years. Like Freya, it has no charts, which has kept me reluctant to just cast on and go for it.

Perlata Pitsigootti-huivi: there is an English translation for this gorgeous, Finnish shawl. It is a bottom up shawl, and casting on 404 stitches does make my heart flop around in my chest a bit, but when I am ready, I think it will be worth it.

Peacock Shawlette (Rav link): so I like peacocks, peacock motifs in lace, and the colors associated with peacocks. This one is also worked bottom up.

Cartouche: I LOVE this shawl. I love it that it looks heavy, warm, and exactly like something you would wrap up in on a chilly, early winter night, sitting outside. I love that it is lace and cables. I love that the difficulty level on it is going to be on the high side. I plan to knit this late this summer, maybe taking it to Pennsic to start it there. It certainly won’t be a “Two Week Pennsic Shawl” like Haruni was last year, but it would be nice to have it done in time to wear it once the weather cools down later this year.

When I have $20 to spare, I am going to buy Romi Hill’s Seven Small Shawls to Knit e-book. Tagyete, Caelano, and Asterope are my favorite shawls of the seven in the book.

So what’s on your queue to knit that you are itching to do these days?

A Spring Smile

It looks like a smile; a pretty, lime green smile.

It is a nice little wedge of spring in an otherwise gray, colorless day. The world seems like it was washed out after the storms that came through last night. Since I was up all night with Grace who was not feeling well, I too, feel fairly washed out and gray. Worn to the nub.

Tomorrow is another day; hopefully a more rested one. In the meantime, I have delicious, soft, spring green lace weight wool to bolster me up and fend off the hard edges of the world.

Freya

While I have a few minutes to catch my breath…

I am very busy with work and with Sapphire projects, but have started my April 2011 SCSC sock club socks. I will give you the details when I have more time and more brain cells to rub together. Suffice it to say they are green and yellow, colorwork, and so far, a few stripes in and a few rows of colorwork in, I can say I love the combination and I wish my Fair Isle skills were better. I am struggling with my stitches being too loose rather than the more typical trouble with them being too tight. I hope it will work out in blocking and that I will get better as I go along.

And following up with last night’s post, I think I have settled on knitting Freya (here’s the Ravelry link for Rav users). I spent a lot of time looking through my Ravelry Queue and my Favorites, and there are so many shawls I would like to knit out there, but I think Freya fits my mood. Since last Spring, I have knit Laminaria, Haruni, Travelling Woman, and Ishbel, so I have done my share of American-style semi-triangular modern shawlettes lately. Freya is very Old World in appearance; very traditional and very elegant. It is adapted from a Danish doily pattern, so it IS very Old World and very traditional, and that is just the sort of mood I am in.

What worries me is that the pattern is completely written out. No charts.

Now, very early on, as I was teaching myself to knit, I wouldn’t knit anything that wasn’t a fully written out pattern. Charts scared me to death. At least they did until I found my lace passion, at which point, I developed a serious aversion to written out patterns for anything more than short easy repetitive patterns (think scarves and socks). For me, lace and written patterns do not work well together. My eyes tend to glaze over and I have a tendency to get lost trying to count words (or knitting shorthand). Charts work for my brain. One box = one stitch. No problem. For whatever reason, 123 rows of written out instructions feels like I might as well be reading a familiar book in Spanish — I see the letters, they look familiar, I even sort of understand the gist, but miss out the details.

So do I just tackle the pattern, as written, and be patient with myself and adapt and grow as a Knitter, or do I attempt to create a chart of my own (sans charting software)?

The second question I have is should I investigate a special edging for it? I see a lot of other knitters have put an edging of their own devising on it, and I love almost every one of them. How do I choose one? Going to need to look at some lace pattern books to see if I can find an edging I like.

I can’t wait to cast on.

Bitten

On a random dash into The Yarn Lounge, I walked out with 970 yards of Malabrigo Lace in colorway Lettuce.

I am positively in love with it. But it was a complete impulse buy. What will I do with almost 1000 yards of spring green love?

My thoughts run to:

Vernal Equinox, which would be a re-knit of the first lace project I ever worked, and the shawl itself came apart after Grace manhandled it soon thereafter.

Bitteroot just because it is beautiful.

Torreyana because it would be the most difficult thing I have attempted yet.

Aeolian because I have wanted to knit it forever and I adore Elizabeth Freeman’s works.

Freya because it is semi-circular and I am in that kind of mood.

Muir because it is rectangular and I have been wanting to try and tackle a rectangular wrap.

Those are just the projects that come to mind based on my queue and favorites list on Ravelry and what yardage I have. I would appreciate any thoughts, opinions, and suggestions any of you might have.

I have been bitten by the spring green lace bug, but have yet to settle on an outlet. Please help!

Tangled Up In…

So now I’m going back again
I got to get her somehow
All the people we used to know
They’re an illusion to me now
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenter’s wives
Don’t know how it all got started
I don’t what they’re doing with their lives
But me I’m still on the road
Heading for another joint
We always did feel the same
We just saw it from a different point of view
Tangled up in Blue.
Bob Dylan

(Byram should probably stop reading now or that eye twitch he sometimes gets when I talk about potential new projects could become permanent.)

You know how you get an idea in your head sometimes and it grows and develops into something you can’t really control? You know how an idea can go from a passing thought to an obsession? Even when it is a bad idea and you know it to be? I’ve got one of those ideas. Not a new idea, just an obsessive thought that wants to manifest itself in the form of wool and lace.

It’s trouble and I know it to be so, because I’ve done it before.

This time, I am thinking…

And some of these…

Why? Because…

• I can.
• I am a better knitter now. I could do a better job at it.
• When I first planned to knit it, I wanted to do it in blue with green beads. I had a strange change of heart when I actually ordered the yarn.
• I want it.
• I can.
• It was worthy of reknitting.
• I want it.

I am cutting in photos of my February Lady Sweater so that you know I have picked up an abandoned project, and that my inherent blue illness has not passed yet. (I think Ishbel offered a reprieve, though.)

I can’t stop thinking about Shipwreck. I think it has something to do with Spring (and Startitis).

So, what would you do? Would you invite trouble to cure an obsessive thought? Would you try and direct that obsession into another pattern, and risk still being obsessed with the original when it’s over?

I am leaning towards giving in and knitting that monster all over again.

(Byram’s eye is twitching. I know because I know these things.)

Lace, Nevr-Dull, Saddle Soap, and Other Random Topics

Ishbel’s Dedication post was important, but the knitters want to know the story of the how and what of knitting it.

Pattern: Ishbel
Size: Small (though it turned out much larger than I expected)
Yarn: Rowan Kidsilk Haze (1 ball and a small bit of the second)
Colorway: 643 – Flowers
Needles: 4.5 mm (US7) straights
Beads: 0/6 seed beads, two tubes, one set was iridescent clear, and the other set had a pink core, with a clear iridescent outer coating.

Per usual, I went up a needle size due to the tightness of my stitching. The pattern is very good and I came across no errata in the charts. The knitting of this was very slow, partly because of the mohair and partly because of the beads. I was very cautious with this pattern because I was knitting in terror of having to rip back any knitting; ripping mohair is living dangerously. I had to tink back a few times, but nothing serious.

Terror is taking this floaty little thing outside to photograph along the Canal Walk and its associated rushing water when the wind is gusting up to 20 miles per hour. And as it turned out, I got about 4 pictures of it in and around the old Alcoa plant area when the batteries in the camera gave up their ghost on me.

Next week I will pack it up and ship it priority mail to Ann in Columbia, South Carolina, who I hope will wear it and love it to its fullest. And that is the end of that. It is hard to believe it took me over a month to knit it, but it was not highly transportable, and only as I got desperate on a self-imposed (and unnecessary, as it turned out) deadline did I become willing to take it out of the house and work on it during my lunches.

Thanks to some time spent at Chick-fil-a on Saturday night, letting Grace run around like a crazy person in the play area, I got a few inches of work done on the second Leyburn sock for February. Chick-fil-a has been a god-send this winter. It has been far too cold to play at the park much, or even just in the back yard. They are really nice about the fact that I usually just go and buy a large coffee and a bottle of white milk for Grace, and I sit in the corner next to the enclosed play area and let her play while keeping one eye on her and one eye on my knitting. As the weather is improving, the park is becoming an option again, and but Chick-fil-a and their indoor play room has done me a great kindness this winter.

The Leyburns will come with me to North Carolina this weekend. We have a rider coming with us in the van, so I will turn over the front seat to him and knit in the back. I am not physically able to knit in the front seat as it gives me terrible motion sickness. As long as my focus is down and on my hands in the back seat, I do alright.

The rest of my week is devoted to finishing new garb for this weekend’s SCA event. I did manage to finish my blue wool dress, complete with trim around the wrists. I have over half the hem done on my white linen underdress, though it still needs a neckline. Since I was up at 3:30 in the morning on Sunday morning, I had time to cut out another wool dress, this one black.

I am sorry the picture is so crummy, but it was 4:30 in the morning at this point.

I added gold brocade “gauntlets” to the sleeves as decoration. This is not very 12th century or documentable, but it certainly is pretty, and the extra layer of fabric around my forearms will keep me warmer. I hope to have enough of the yellow brocade to do a band of it above the hemline too. I just couldn’t go to an event with only one piece of garb to get me through the weekend. I am too prone to pouring coffee down my front or slipping in mud to have nothing to fall back on.

That is the view of my efforts from the much more reasonable hour of 8:30 p.m. last night. And that is probably the last Sam Adam’s Winter Lager I will drink this season.

Now, the event we are going to is named Ymir after the Viking frost giant, and occurs every February. There have been snowy Ymirs and there have been nice, 70 degree Ymirs, but the vast majority of them are very cold and very dry. I have ensured that this year will be sunny and toasty warm by bringing only wool garb to the event with me. For my SCAdian friends, you can thank me for this service by bringing me a cold cup of water this weekend while I slowly roast in all my extra warm brand new garb. (Actually, they are calling for it to be 72 on Friday, but only 54 on Saturday.)

It was a two-beer kind of effort since I was operating off about 2.5 hours of sleep. That was a Sam Adam’s Chocolate Bock. Again, probably the last of the season, but a damn fine beer.

I know Spring is at hand because the rest of the week will be focused on finishing the garb I have started and polishing up my general medieval appearance. Boots need cleaning and polishing, veils need to be located and packed, accessories, like my belt, need to be found, and the belt likely needs a new hole punched, and everything needs packing.

Oh yes, Spring is at hand now. I love the smell of Nevr-Dull, saddle soap, and beer in the late evening.

For Ann

I am sure you know that silk is one of the strongest natural fibers. Mohair comes from the Angora goat, which produces a silk-like fiber, high in luster and strength, but lacking the fully developed scales found in sheep’s wool, meaning it lacks the “itch” factor of common wool, and does not felt like wool. It is very fine fiber, uncommon, soft, and still strong.

The combination of a tiny strand of silk and the baby-soft haze of kid mohair results in a yarn that appears soft, delicate, feminine, and almost fragile. But it isn’t. It is actually as tough as steel and very resistant to friction.

(Taken before blocking.)

(Soaking in a warm, Euclan bubble bath.)
The yarn in question, this Kidsilk Haze, held up under the intense pressure of being fiercely blocked this weekend, when I pinned Ishbel within an inch of its life, all the while being “assisted” by a 3 year old who was sticking pins in it willy-nilly along with me. The stress of washing, pinning, stretching, pulling, tugging, and spreading did nothing but make the yarn and resulting fabric even more beautiful than before.

(Yes, I really did let Grace help.)
And that is why Ishbel is for my dear friend, Ann. Ann is one of the most feminine people I know. And yet, she is a strong and empowered woman who is unafraid that her femininity will weaken her in the eyes of the rest of the world. She is a nurse, an A student almost finished getting her Masters, the mother of two beautiful and strong women, a devoted wife, and a tremendous mentor. She is even a “fairy god-mother,” as Grace has dubbed her, since she is also Grace’s actual god-mother.

In December, Ann invited us to join her with several other friends for a weekend get-away to Charleston, SC, to celebrate her 25th wedding anniversary with her husband, Les. Their generosity blew us away, and I decided I wanted to commemorate their Anniversary and their tremendous gift to us in yarn; yarn I sought out and purchased while on that trip. Obviously no yarn is worthy of 25 years of marriage or the trip to Charleston, but I wanted to make something that was deeply personalized and meaningful for Ann.

So, a yarn as delicate, soft, fluffy, and feminine as it is strong, resistant to failing under pressure, and only becomes more beautiful and defined after undergoing an intense trial, and purchased in her favorite city, seemed appropriate. And because it is for Ann, it had to be pink. And it had to have some sparkle. The outer visible edge is lacy, delicate, and beaded, but the core is solid, sturdy, and very strong.

It is so very Ann.

I love you very much, my friend.

Not Quite

We are so close to the start of Spring that it hardly seems possible that temperatures were still firmly in the teens when I left for work this morning. In fact, it was cold enough that my truck gave the slightest hesitation before turning over. For Virginia, and for a relatively new battery, that is cold.

(This was what the sky looked like on Wednesday evening; really neat clouds came in ahead of the slightest dusting of snow. Pretty good shot of the sky taken at 60 MPH on I-95, if I do say so myself.)

As nasty as this Winter has been, I suspect last night was the last time this season we will visit those teens. Lows for the coming week will be as cold as the upper 20s (which seem totally reasonable after a 15 degree morning) and as warm as the low 40s. There are some highs in the 60s coming. We are almost to Spring. Just not quite.

I finished sewing a dress for the SCA event we are going to next weekend, but it doesn’t have all the embellishments I intended for it. It probably won’t get all the trim and the beads I was sort of dreaming of; certainly not in time for next weekend, probably not ever. But the underdress for it is still woefully far from being ready to go. Not quite ready to go yet.

The first Leyburn sock is finished and has been since last weekend, but the second one has only a couple of rounds of the toe started, and has not been touched since a disastrous Tuesday night venture to Chick-fil-a to let Grace play in the play area while I knit and drank coffee. (It was disastrous because it involved another kid puking everywhere and closing the play area less than 10 minutes after we got there…a veritable Greek tragedy as far as Grace was concerned.)

I have devoted a lot of time to Ishbel since Tuesday, but I am at the Black Hole stage that all shawls and shawlettes go through, where you are only a dozen or so rows from being done, but no matter how much you knit, you are still only a dozen or so rows from being done. A quick count shows that I am actually 10 and a half rows from casting off (I had to stop last night at the halfway point of a row; I was losing a battle with a bottle of Merlot). Those 10 rows will probably take me as long as the first 60 rows of stockinette stitch did. It can’t be helped, but it is depressing to spend 2 hours on your knitting and have seemingly nothing to show for your time.

I tried getting some pictures this morning of Ishbel. The conference room where I take most of my photos faces southwest so it gets terrible light before late afternoon, so I apologize for the lousy lighting of my shots.

Because of the bad light, it was difficult to get an accurate picture of the real color of the pink Kidsilk Haze. The photo above is just about perfect, but everything else ranged from lavender to magenta. Cameras are silly creatures. As bad as this photo is, it does demonstrate one important thing.

That little ball of Kidsilk Haze is what is currently left so far of the first ball of yarn in the project. It has been like the Giving Ball; it just goes on and on. To be sure, I am going to tap into the second ball before the remaining 10 and a half rows are finished (unless it really does go all Elijah with the oil and flour on me), but I am very impressed with just how far a single ball of Kidsilk Haze has gotten me with Ishbel.

One last photo, not quite a good one, of the not quite finished Pink Fuzzy Ishbel. It sort of fits the theme of the week.

Not quite there yet.

Pilgrimage

Lucy in the Sky has been wound into a ball off 360 yards of squishy goodness, ready to cast on for a pair of Leyburn socks tomorrow, February 1st, the next sock in my SCSC2011 plan.

My skein had a lot less white in it that the one in the picture on BlueMoon’s page, but I understand the nature of handpainted yarns; you get what they dye. I think Mom’s Leyburns will be mostly navy blue socks with the trellis effect of the Leyburn pattern showing up in the grey/light blue. She wanted socks to go with blue or grey pants, so, hopefully, this will do the trick.

I have knit Leyburn before.

This was my Grandmother’s Christmas gift this year; the yarn was Wisdom Yarns Marathon, Boston (not on the website anymore), but the purples, greens, and blues reminded me so much of the irises we used to have at my childhood home in Hampton, that I nicknamed them the Iris socks.

The Faux-oro scarf is over 4.5 feet long and on its way to completion. I had intended to just let the colors come together holistically, uninterrupted, and allow for natural high and low contrast stripes, but…I just couldn’t do it. There came a point where black on black stripes were about to line up, and beyond that, the greens and blues were going to line up, so I chose to snip one yarn and start pulling it from the opposite end of the ball, reordering the stripes. The adjustment is almost 100% invisible and my stripes continue to contrast nicely.

I would never have believed that a 1×1 rib stitch could keep me so enchanted. I suppose it is the shifting colors. Still, it would be lovely if I could finish this today, so I am one less Work in Progress come tomorrow, when I cast on the February Socks of the Month.

Speaking of WIPs, I managed to get some work done on Ishbel this weekend too. I have completed charts A and B, and now need to work another Chart A before moving into C, D, and finishing with E. The Kidsilk Haze is proving to be the Giving Ball. I still haven’t come close to finishing the first ball yet, though I am certain I will have to get into the second ball to finish this out. The beads are slowing this project down to a crawl, but I really believe they are worth it.

Byram’s Jayne hat still needs ear flaps and a pom pom, and February Lady sweater is sitting unloved and untouched in a box. Such is the life of a WiP in my house.

Now for my best and most beautiful Work in Progress:
Pre-pancake breakfast.

Post-pancake breakfast (and visit with friends, trip to a museum, and a drive around a small college campus).

Finally, if you are in the Richmond area, I highly recommend paying a visit to the University of Richmond’s Modlin Art Center, where they are running an exhibition in the Harnett Museum of Art called Pilgrimage and Faith: Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. With more than 75 objects from the three faiths on display, it was quite interesting. I was floored by just how beautiful the 12th-13th century Islamic ceramic tiles were. There was 15th century orphrey on display from a priest’s robes. It was awe-inspiring to get that close to the embroidery. There was stained glass from Canterbury that gave me goosebumps. But the two 12th century reliquary boxes just about sent me through the floor. There we were, Byram and I, looking at artifacts from the century that we have both studied so closely, within inches of items made by people who lived 800 years ago; things I have only gotten to see in books and on websites. Things people we have studied might have seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands. It was cool on a level that is hard to describe.

I realized just how badly I need to get myself to the Cloisters and the Met up in New York.

Anyway, the exhibition is free, it is small, and even with studied reading and a not-whiney 3 year old, it should take less than 30 minutes to go through it all, and I encourage Richmonders to pay it a visit and get a little perspective on 3 of the major faiths and their art and history. It was good stuff.