Kirsti Knits

Not quite so long a wait!

2006-07-10T15:10:00.000-04:00

At least it's not been a month or more since my last update... but I've still got a lot of catching up to do. First and most importantly, I have a long overdue THANK YOU to my Sockapaloooza pal Laurie for some gorgeous knitting and great socks. Here's the opened box...

	They didn't actually travel very far - Laurie's based in Michigan too. And just to confuse me, she asked the guys at Threadbear to mail the package! Included inside the red tissue were some Red Wings goodies - pencils and a key ring .... and these:
The yarn is Fiber Gems Opal (navy) and Quartz (hummingbird). I've not seen or knitted with this yarn, and it's so so soft. I just love the colours - the flecks of blues and purples - and Laurie's knitting technique has me so so impressed. They are a little bit, and she suggested that I rip them out and reknit, but it feels wrong to destroy such wonderful wonderful work. Besides, I know I wouldn't be able to get anywhere close to that even tension and tight short row heel! So I'm going to try and tumble dry them after washing to see if I can shrink them without felting. Laurie, I'm sorry it's taken me this long to thank you - but I am so so pleased with these.
In the meantime, I've been finishing hats and starting some more. Here is the Shedir chemo cap, in Rowan "Calmer", for my friend Rose. I love how the cables look, particularly how the decreases worked to make the octagonal pattern on the top of the hat. It was absolutely worth the 110% concentration that the decrease rows needed!

And here is a finished Odessa hat, this time for me. I wore on Saturday night with my black pearls and a simple black dress, and got nothing but compliments on the 1920s style and how cute it was. It doesn't look quite so good when I'm wearing a T-shirt and squinting into the sun, but this does show how the deep bronze beads catch the sunlight.

And the final piece of knitting news ... I went to the Knitting Room in Birmingham today to return extra yarn I'd bought for Shedir, and they're clearancing out their Manos stock... so I picked up 2 skeins of variegated, and 1 skein of solid turquoise, at 40% off. Drool away...
	And I've started Yet Another Odessa hat. When I gave Rose the green one, both her teenage daughters (who act as her fashion advisors in chemo caps, scarves and other style matters) thought it was so cute that they wanted them too. So I've just started one in blue (actually, I had 3 beaded rows done before realising this morning that I'd forgotten to change up to the size 6 needles after the ribbing, so I had to rip it out back to where the pattern rows start), and have one in pink waiting to be done. Thankfully it's a quick enough knit that it should only take about 3 days or so.
I've also got to do some more Broadripple socks for my godmother's birthday gift, and am dreaming of starting on the alpaca lace shawl, so that I can at least get in on the tail end of the Amazing Lace summer knitting. And I'm off to England on August 5th for 2 weeks or so, so will have some good plane time to knit. In the meantime, I hope everyone is enjoying the summer weather, with good friends and family, and no dropped stitches!

Not sure I could manage this...

2006-06-26T22:36:00.000-04:00

.. but some art student has created a knitted Ferrari complete with embroidered badge.

My own knitting news isn't quite so impressive. I finished the Odessa hat and gave it to our friend who's going through chemo, before I could take a photo of the final product. She loved it, and so did her daughters, so I'll be making two more for them. Hopefully there'll be SOME Odessa pictures here soon. It was fun to knit (once the darn beads were strung) and quick too - I started on Wednesday night and had it finished by Friday evening.

I've also started the Shedir chemo cap from Knitty for the same friend, in Rowan calmer. It's a lovely yarn to work with, and really soft. I'm not 100% happy with how the cables are looking though - single stitch cables in cotton show up every tension error that I make. Hopefully after blocking it will look better.

We're off to Chicago on Wednesday for a gig - details at www.terrygonda.com if anyone reading this is in the area and wants to come along. Bring your knitting! I'm looking forward to 9 hours or so of knitting time in the car to get there and back home again.

More updates to come, including a very very overdue thanks to my Sockapalooza pal.

Ye Gods, she's still here

2006-06-23T12:46:00.000-04:00

Yep, I'm still around and finally had some time to get photos off my camera and resized and cropped in Paintshop Pro, and uploaded to flickr. (And as with most pf my posts, click on any of the pictures for a larger version. Especially the sweater pics. Really.) So this entry will actually contain some knitting content! In the 3 second "other news" bulletin: I didn't get my job back; I'll be starting an MA in Counseling at Oakland University in September; I'll be briefly visiting England in August to get the student visa; immigration paperwork sucks; so does trying to find health insurance that will cover the meds I need; and I had the most wonderful visit with my sister and adorable nephew which was the best soul medicine anyone could ask for.

And I've actually been knitting! Continuing on the sock kick (there's a pun in there somewhere), I made some Broadripple socks as a 50th birthday gift for my "folk sister" Sherry. Sherry loves purple, and claimed the very first object I ever knit - a scarf with blue/purple novelty yarn and black worsted - the moment it was off the needles. I was a bit worried as the only shoe size information I knew was "small" but with the stretch of the Fixation yarn, they fit perfectly. I now have requests from two other people for identical pairs!


	We drove down to Maryland last weekend for the big 50th birthday party, which was just great fun. And for the person who's complained that they wanted to see pictures of me (and because it was such a great party with such wonderful people)...

Me, Terry and musician Eric Schwartz	From left to right..Siobhan Quinn, Laurie Laba, Mary Pittari and me.
	Terry and I relaxing and listening to featured performer and exceptional songwriter Greg Greenway. Sherry and her husband Steve run a house concert series where we've played a couple of times, so absolutely knew how to put on a great concert. And wonderful food too.
So, back to knitting ... here's the other big project I've been working on: an Aran Sweater from the Harmony Guide to Aran and Fair Isle Knitting. It's a gift for a friend, who picked out the yarn and the pattern. It's my first sweater, so I'm a little intimidated about the whole putting-it-together process, but right now, I'm enjoying knitting away on the back.

And here are close-ups of the side and centre cable panels. The edges of the sweater and the middle of the diamonds are filled in with double moss stitch. I have to admit, there are occasional times I impress myself, and this is one of them.
And finally ... I'm also working on the Odessa hat, which I started on Wednesday night, with lots of help from Lynne with the bead stringing and is coming on rapidly. Although I did find a knot in the yarn and so had to restring about half the beads, which was immensely frustrating.
I'm still making slow progress on the Cedar Creek and toe-up Pomatomus socks from the previous knitting post, and about to start the Shedir chemo cap from Knitty's breast cancer issue for a friend who's going through chemo right now. And that's pretty much the update. Now I've got to also go and catch up on my commenting/visiting friends' blogs, which I've shamefully neglected over the past month too. Thanks for reading this far, and I hope it won't be nearly so long before the next update!

An explanation

2006-05-18T13:18:00.000-04:00

I've really neglected this blog over the past 2 months or so ... there is a reason why. I try to keep my posts on here mostly knitting focused, and not go into huge personal stuff, as that really isn't what I intended this blog for. But I figured I owed at least a brief post saying what's been going on.

Since mid-March, I've been having severe panic attacks that left me unable to get into work. All my old "don't tell, don't reach out for help" coping kicked in, so I pretended to the rest of the world that everything was fine, while the idea of even contacting my boss would leave me shaky, unable to breathe, sweating etc etc. Not good. And the end result was that I was fired on May 2nd.

This threw everything into turmoil, but has also had some really positive consequences. Firstly, I had to tell Terry what was going on - and she's been just amazing. Wonderful. The best partner I could have ever wanted. The fact that I was even too afraid to tell her what was going on is an indication of how skewed my perception of the world had got. Talking to my friends and family made me realise what an exceptional support network I have, and need to use.

Secondly: I'm now getting help from a variety of sources to deal with both the panic and the underlying stuff that triggered all this, and stopped me from getting the help I needed. I've put in an appeal to my job asking that my absence be taken as medical leave under the FMLA, and my termination be revoked. I don't know how long university bureaucracy will take to handle this; it's been a week so far, and nothing.

I guess that's the administrative system for you. But I have been knitting and have a bunch of pics to upload. My finished sockapalooza socks were sent off (and my pal left a lovely comment in my last blog entry). I received my own pair and they are just wonderful - I'm truly in awe of the construction and even tension and knitting technique. I've also started on an Aran cable sweater for my friend Gregg, and am halfway up the back. Plus today, because I wanted a change, I cast on for another pair of Broadripple socks in purple.

So now I've got all this out ... I'll make room for photos and stuff as soon as I can.

Yes I am still alive...

2006-04-19T13:38:00.000-04:00

.. but my laptop isn't, hence the lack of recent updates. It won't boot up in anything other than safe mode, and even then, it is constantly accessing the hard drive, and seems to have no memory at all. Not good. I'll have to find some geek squad or store to take it to, as I've tried running spybot and a virus scan to no avail - but I couldn't use live update for my virus definitions in safe mode, so that may be part of the problem.

So.. knitting progress since I last blogged. We have some finished socks (scroll past the inevitable space that Flickr inserts before a table - if anyone's figured out how to avoid this, please let me know!)


Full details on these are in my finished objects blog. On the left are my Jaywalkers, in Socks that Rock Fire on the Mountain colorway, and on the right are my Lorna's Laces socks from my "2 socks on 2 circulars, toe up, short row heel" City Knits class. I'm really pleased with the toe up ones. Here's a close up of the lace pattern, as modelled by my hand - hence the bad fit!
	We also have major progress on my Sockapaloooza socks. My pal had no real preferences except nothing fun fur or acrylic, so I dug this yummy Mountain Colors Bearfoot from my stash, and looked for a suitable leaf pattern to go with it. I love this Fiber Trends one, and the leaves are more distinct when the sock is stretched out than they look in this picture.
I had one false start on size 1 needles, and got worried after two pattern repeats in when it wouldn't fit over my heel, but they're knitting up just fine on size 2 Addis. I also had to reknit the toe of the first sock, as I managed to do the three needle bind off without re-arranging my stitches, so it was perpendicular to the sock toe. Ooops. My only concern is that they're definitely "autumn/winter" socks, and we're just starting spring ... I guess my pal will just have to hold onto them for 6 months or so. And so with 2 pairs of socks finished, of course, I have to start on some more.

On the left is the second Hippo Beast sock, this one being knitted toe-up, so as to reverse the pattern. I figured out how to turn the "end of pattern decreases" into "set up pattern increases" and the few rows I've got are looking good. My only concern is how much my guage has tightened up since knitting the first - I may switch to continental carry, as I do knit more loosely with the yarn in my left hand.
And on the right are my Socks That Rock sock club yarn. Again, very little progress, but I do love how the yarn is knitting up. The socks also have a fancy picot edging. Much as I hate knitting 3 rounds only for them to disappear and be folded underneath, I do like how it looks. Here's a close up:
I've got a couple of larger projects that I'm about to embark on as well. The first is an Aran cabled sweater in a pale blue for our friend and household angel, Gregg. The pattern is the "His and Hers" Aran Sweater from Aran and Fair Isle Knitting. The book is mostly a collection of stitch patterns and some history of both techniques, but this is the few actual object patterns in there. And I'm glad that Gregg preferred that one to any of the Alice Starmore designs!
	So I've swatched, and after going down two needle sizes, finally got guage. This will be my first "big" project and my first real sweater, and I don't want to mess things up from the start. So I swatched, and then washed and blocked the swatches before measuring them. The yarn was chosen by Gregg - it's Elann's Peruvian Highland Wool, worsted weight, in Blue Vista.
We've worked out a bartering system for this: for each hour I spend knitting, he will put in an hour of work on the house - painting, organizing, decorating, etc etc. Our house wouldn't look nearly as nice as it does without Gregg; so far, he's painted four rooms for us, used his flower arranging talents to make the place look gorgeous for our Christmas party, cleaned out our basement after it was flooded last year ... he's been a lifesaver. Hopefully this sweater will meet his standards!
Here's the other experimental project: I had such fun knitting ThreadyBear that I didn't want to stop the Fair Isle knitting, but I was having a hard time finding projects that I'd actually wear. I love some of the Philosophers Wool designs, for instance, but can't see myself actually wearing any of them.
So I combined my love of Fair Isle with my love for knitting Booga Bags, and have come up with a slightly larger scale booga base, with a fair isle pattern up the sides. I used motifs from the book above, as well as one or two that I liked in ThreadyBear, and have bought Cascade 220 in 7 colours: 3 shades of purple/dark blue; 3 shades of yellow/gold and a deep red for an accent colour. I just started casting on the base in purple, so we'll see how this turns out. My first design project, almost a year to the day since I picked up knitting needles.
	This book, however, contains a whole load of things I would like to knit. It arrived from Amazon yesterday, and I've already learned a whole lot about design and project selection from the first chapter, which is worth the price of the book alone. Then there's all these wonderful projects. Here's two that are calling my name at the moment:

There's also a gorgeous cabled skirt by the wonderful Jodi Green that could be a fun design to knit and I could almost see myself wearing. So that should be enough updates to keep people happy for a while - at least until my laptop gets fixed. And my mother is visiting from England this weekend, so I won't be around much til next week at the earliest. Thanks for missing me!

Home again, home again...

2006-03-19T09:15:00.000-05:00

Well, almost. Packing up and getting ready to leave Boston. But Stariel has put together some photos from my time out with the Magnificent Seven Knittyboard folk yesterday. Go look. There's even Jaffa Cakes.

Boston adventures

2006-03-16T16:57:00.000-05:00

Another quick post, because I'm heading out to Haaavad Square to meet some friends for dinner. But Boston is great fun (and the conference is just about bearable). I got to meet up with Ariel and Jenn on Tuesday night for coffee and knitting and yummy Indian food. And here's proof (picture shamelessly stolen from Ariel's blog:

I was also delighted to find a LUSH store 2 blocks away from the hotel. Lush was one of my affordable treats back in the UK, and there's nothing like walking into one of their stores and having your nose overwhelmed with all kinds of good smells. So I stocked up on Flying Fox shower gel, and Retread conditioner and massage bars and hand cream and various other goodies.

Plus I got to explore the Boston Public Library - I even became a guest member mostly so that I could look at their reference only copy of Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting - yes, the one that goes on ebay for over $200. It's certainly a wonderful book - great history and research on Aran sweaters, and some yummy yummy patterns too. But I'm not shelling out that amount of money for it! Hopefully someone will bring it back into print soon....

OK, that's the news update. Oh - and I'm getting together with a bunch of Knittyboard folk on Saturday afternoon, which should make for some fun adventures. If anyone reading this is around the Boston area, check this thread for more info. And now off for food. And if you want to have an overload of adorable cuteness, you really need to see the newest photos of my nephew. Can't wait to see him again.

Drive by posting...

2006-03-13T23:12:00.000-05:00

On the way to bed, before I leave for 5 days in Boston. Back Sunday. Work conference, but hopefully I'll have some time to eat good seafood and maybe even find a SnB group or yarn shop.

The poncho got finished and delivered to its recipient, who was overjoyed, and refused to take it off. Here are the pics:

The pink was a last minute, er, addition, because I used up all my purple yarn for tassles before I realised that I still needed to make the i-cord for the drawstring, and sew the casing for the string down. Oops. But I figured that by putting it in the fringe, it became a feature. Overall, it's a simple pattern and a quick knit - the main frustration is that the rounds keep getting longer and longer as you go on... but it was all worth it to see the joy on Evelyn's face. Oh, and doesn't it tone well with my blog colours?

A good day for free stuff!

2006-03-01T10:19:00.000-05:00

Well Monday was highly profitable in terms of knitting loot! Look at all this!

	I stop off at City Knits on my way home from work to stroke the new sock yarn they were expecting (and which hadn't arrived), and ended up talking and making plans for a fair isle felted bag that I'll design... and as I was at the counter, I picked up and flicked through a new book that was displayed near the register...
And found this! A whole chunk of pages that were printed upside down. (It's clearer if you click on the thumbnail to see the whole image). I showed Lynn, who went to call the publisher. And I jokingly said that if they let you keep it, I want it! ... and a few minutes later she handed it to me. The publishers are sending her a replacement copy, and now of course, she has to go through the rest of the stock to see if this was a one-off. It's actually quite a neat little reference book, so I'm glad to get it and save $15.
Then I get to our Monday night SnB at Sweetwaters in Royal Oak, to find a new face ... Kristina, the woman who'd started the group way before I ever came along. It was wonderful to meet her, and see the amazing work she was doing on the Sunrise Circle Jacket from Interweave Knits. And, to say thankyou to Julie and myself for keeping the group going last year, when for a long time it was basically just Julie, myself and Coley, she'd brought gifts from her yarn stash. Look at these - aren't they pretty?

On the left are two balls of laceweight yarn. The grey one is the softest thing I've felt for a while, and the greeny-yellow one has this amazing slight boucle to it, and should be fun to knit up and see how it looks. On the right are three skeins of Cestari natural yarn, a 2 ply worsted weight, with approximately 210yds per skein. The amazing thing about this wool is that a) it was "manufactured exclusively by the sheep and shepherds of Chester Farms, Churchville VA", and b) it's still got all the lanolin oils in it. So it'll make your hands wonderfully soft when knitting with it. OK Julie, it's up to you now.. let me know which one you'd like, and we can meet up to handover the yarn.
And the final, closing gift for the day.. was of course, this:
The Gold Medal for finishing in the Knitting Olympics. Nothing more really needs to be added.

Gold!

2006-02-27T11:03:00.000-05:00

So here it is. The finished Threadybear. I got the final ends woven in at 4:05pm, showed it off to gathered SnB'ers, and then gave it a basic block with a steam iron over a tea towel before going to bed last night. As per usual, click on the photos for a link to a larger image.


The front of the sweater.	The inside, showing off the nice neat stranding.
Here's a close up of the second sleeve (the left one in the picture above). I did a somewhat better job of picking up the stitches, so it's sitting closer to the top of the shoulder. This will lie flat when I spread it out, unlike the other sleeve, which has a small bump to it. So that's one more thing I learned: how important it is to really make sure that your picked up stitches go all the way to the top and aren't one row short.
The other thing that you can hopefully see from the above picture is that the left sleeve has a nicer curve to the bottom of it (I think). When doing the decreases for this sleeve, I left the first and last stitch of the row, and did my decreases on the two stitches outside of that. The first sleeve, I just decreased right at the edges, and so the line isn't quite as nice. Yet another thing learned. The pattern itself doesn't give any specific instructions about type of decreases; it just states to "decrease one stitch at the start and end of every third round". I used paired decreases (ssk at the start, k2t at the end) which I'm trusting made it look more even than if I'd just knitted 2 stitches together each time.
	And here was the other scary thing, the thing that made me fear on Saturday that I wouldn't finish. This is how much yarn was left at the end. Count it: 5 balls and one tiny thread. The sweater used 7 colours. The middle shade of the browns, I ended up having to tie the final 1cm long end from the last stitch to another yarn tail to get it to hold while I bound off the cuff. I don't know whether I just used too much yarn weaving in ends, or knit too loosely .... but if anyone else is making this sweater, be very very frugal with the two darkest shades for your main colour (F and G on the chart).

What else did I learn? Let's see: if you're cutting steeks, you don't need to be anal and weave your new yarn ends in past the steek, because once it's cut down the middle, all you'll have done is added unnecessary thickness to the other side of the sweater. In fact, Bethany, who is also knitting Threadybear, found a great article by Lucy Neatby on steeks, where she suggests swapping colours during the first half of the steek and just knotting the ends together. Of course, I didn't do this research, and so only read this after I'd finished knitting and cutting both my steeks. Oh well. Again, this project was all about the learning.

Now it's back to my 2 socks on 2 circs (yay!), my jaywalker socks, and a poncho for a friend's daughter who's about to turn two. The conversation went something like this.

Me:

Actually, it's not that bad. Although I've always hated the idea of knitted (or crocheted for that matter) ponchos for adults, they do look sort of cute on little girls. And Lynne at City Knits found me a nice pattern by Knitting Pure and Simple for a hooded poncho (scroll down about two thirds of the way down the page, and it's on the left hand side), and I've got some chunky purple Plymouth Encore and am well underway. It's pretty simple stockinette, with symmetrical increases, the same kind as the Jaywalker socks, to make the V shaping. It won't show up quite so much in a solid purple, but I couldn't find any variegated stuff that was the right colour. March 11th is my deadline for that, and then it'll be more socks for my Sockapaloooza pal. I've picked out the yarn, and almost decided on a pattern, so want to get started on that soon too.

So much knitting, so little time. But at least I got my Olympic medal. Thanks to Matt at Threadbear for coming up with the pattern and kit; to everyone for the support - real life and virtual - ; and to Terry for not going completely crazy wondering why I was obsessing and spending so much time on something that won't even be worn by a real person. And of course, to the Yarn Harlot herself for coming up with this crazy idea in the first place.

I might just make it!

2006-02-23T21:02:00.000-05:00

After a very productive SnB at Caribou last night, and a bit more knitting while waiting for Terry to come home, and then some work this afternoon and this evening ... I'm feeling slightly more optimistic about my chances of finishing in time. I switched from dpns to using two Addi circulars for the sleeve, and that's certainly made things a lot faster, and easier too.

So here's my progress, with one sleeve completed and the other ready to go:

That's one sleeve completed, with ends all woven in too. I'm overall pretty pleased with it, although the sleeve has ended up sitting too low on the shoulder, and making a kind of ugly bump. I'm sure a teddy won't mind, and I've certainly tried to rectify it when picking up stitches for the second sleeve. This is why I'm doing this project, to learn and avoid these mistakes on a full size garment. Plus, although I figured out that I should use paired decreases on the sleeves, I didn't think about leaving an undecreased "edge" stitch at the start and end of the round, like you do on socks. That might make a smoother seam, and again, I'll try that on the other sleeve.

Using the Addi's also made it so so much easier to pick up the other armhole stitches, especially as by putting the stitches onto the cable, I could stretch out the steek so it lay nice and flat for cutting. And, to make up for the lack of documentation of the first steek...

	Here's me just starting to cut open the second steek. Note the bottle of wine in the background. This is because the cutting was proceded by...
...this! Barefoot Merlot, highly recommended in combination with Addi Turbos for making your steek cutting a lot less stressful. And, to be precisely accurate, the bottle in the background was Monday night's Gewurstraminer that I tracked down for Terry's Christmas gift.
	And here's the end result: one open armhole. OK, it's a rather fuzzy picture, but you can blame Terry for that. Or the wine.

So now we're going to watch the women's figure skating and I'll see how far I can get with this sleeve. I'm not working tomorrow, so hopefully can get it close to done, if not completely done. We've got a busy weekend: going to see two shows at the Ark on Friday and Saturday night, staying over with some friends in Ann Arbor on Saturday, then a church membership class til 3pm Sunday. But I might yet make gold, even if I don't find a bear to model it by then. Heck, if necessary, I'll see if one of Amby's dogs will put it on...

Onto the sleeves

2006-02-22T08:34:00.000-05:00

Well, progress has been slower than I'd have liked, due to this strange thing called "real life" getting in the way. I'm not sure if I'll be able to finish in time for the gold medal - but I certainly don't regret tackling Threadybear at all.

Especially as.... I cut the first armhole steek last night. (Cutting the neck steek doesn't really count as it was only 3 stitches wide). Sadly I don't have pictures of me doing the Actual Deed, but here's the garment so far:


The back of the sweater, showing the completed pattern, and ribbed neckline.	The front neckline - it's slightly lower than the back. And look at the wonderfully neat stranding inside!
	And here it is. The armhole. I'm only about 2 rows into the sleeve so far, but the steek has already nicely folded itself inside the arm. It was a tad scary (and yes, that's British understatement), but so far, it's all holding together!

I'll be at SnB at Caribou tonight, and Terry's working very late, so I can at least get 4 hours or so done then. Plus I have Friday off work, and Saturday morning... so we'll see how it goes. And yes, to Andy and Suz and all the other people who've asked, I will be going bear shopping for a suitable model.

Thanks to everyone for all your comments and support, and discussion on the Curmudgeon's post I linked to in the previous entry. If you do read her blog, you'll see that she did "eat crow" and realise that the Knitting Olympics is not necessarily a 'sheep' thing, and that many people, including me, are getting a lot of good out of it.

What I'm learning

2006-02-18T13:25:00.000-05:00

Marilyn over at the Knitting Curmudgeon has challenged us Knitting Olympians to prove why joining 4,000 people in a time deadline isn't just sheep like behavior, resulting in nothing but progress reports.

So here's what I'm learning so far.

I like knitting fair isle, even more so when it's small and intricate rather than chunky yarn like my earlier fair isle hats.
How to keep my tension even, particularly tricky when some colours of yarn are much thinner/stickier than others, which are thicker and more fluffy.
How to follow a fairly complex colour chart, without losing my place or row
That working in ends as you go makes for much quicker weaving in, and that weaving the ends in every day is a lot less intimidating than leaving the ends to accumulate for a while.
How to knit steeks - and, pretty soon, how to cut them
An appreciation for generations of fair isle knitters who created these garments without the help of Addi Turbos, on really long double pointed needles.
That none of my teddy bears will be big enough to model the sweater when done! (And, because of the way the sweater is designed, with really low armholes, I don't think I can find a small child with the correct body shape either! Though it would probably fit very badly on Oscar)
To trust Matt in his choice of colourways. I'm actually really liking the browns and blues now.
That I can be a fairly productive knitter, and there is more time for knitting in a day than I'd otherwise have imagined. So "I don't have the time to start a big project" is no longer a valid excuse.
That I enjoy feeling connected to other knitters around the world. The deadline and finishing isn't as important to me as the process, and creating something beautiful that otherwise might have languished at the back of the cupboard for another 6 months.

Not too shabby for halfway through the games, eh? Still to come: cutting steeks, picking up a neckline and sleeves.

So now you've sat through all that rambling, here's the obligatory progress photos. Front and back, taken inside and outside today, while there's actually some sunshine here in Royal Oak.

I'm about 14 rows from the top of the sweater. When I reach there, I join the shoulders, knit some more ribbing for the neck and cut the neck steek. Then it's on to the sleeves. Not bad progress all in all. You can see the armhole steek stitches showing up quite clearly in both pictures, and, if I'd actually taken more time to read Matt's directions, I'd have outlined both ends from the beginning, and used blue (background colour) rather than brown. Oh well. It shouldn't make too much of a difference in the long run.

And now I'm going to see if I can't get another 3 or 4 rounds in before church this afternoon. I wish all other Olympic knitters a productive weekend!

Olympics day 5

2006-02-15T09:41:00.000-05:00

Threadybear continues to take shape. I'm about halfway up the body now. Here's the overall progress:


It's about 11" wide across, so I'm going to need to find a large bear to model it when I'm done. The two lighter blues are a little bit more distinguishable in this picture. There's 4 blues in total: the very dark accent colour, the darker shade (A) that's used in rows just above the ribbing, the medium shade (B) which is used in..hmm.. how to describe it. The row near the top with the deep blue and golden brown alternating dots? The rows just below and just above that one are shade B. Then there's shade C which is more of a heathered blue texture. That blue is surrounding the middle row of motifs - the band above the "flowers". Anyway, I'm still having fun knitting it, even though my right arm is starting to ache a little. I didn't do much yesterday, except for weaving in ends, so I'm about a day behind. But this still puts me halfway through the body, so I'm not worried yet.
Here's the fun bits: I've started the steek stitches for the armholes. These are the ones that I'll (eeps) cut into to open them up. I've marked them with the big black arrow. Of course, on Sunday night, I was knitting too late, and sailed past the row on the chart that was marked in green thinking "oh, isn't that pretty". The next morning, I realized that the green line was, in fact, the indication to cast on the steek stitches. So, after ripping back a couple of rows, we're now all set. It was only about halfway up the steek that I decided to always knit the final steek stitch in brown, as well as the first one, as I wanted to really mark where the steek started and ended. Hopefully it'll all be clear when I come to pick up the stitches to start the sleeve.
	And here's the other gratifying bit - the insides. One of the tricks in fair isle knitting is to keep your floats (the yarn that you're not knitting with that gets carried behind the work) as even and relaxed as possible. If you pull them too tight, the garment will get puckered; if you leave them too loose, then things can catch on them (not that a teddy bear is likely to have fingers or jewelry, but even so...) I'm pleased with how even this is turning out.

In other news, I've not been feeling so well the past couple of days. I'm going to rest today and see if I can make it to SNB at Caribou tonight.

Day 2's progress

2006-02-12T15:43:00.000-05:00

Here's how things are looking so far. I got a row or two ahead of schedule last night - good thing too, as I don't think I'll have as much time today. Hopefully I can catch up at SNB tomorrow night too. And there's a lot of ends to weave in piling up...

I'm feeling somewhat ambivalent about the colourway I chose. The two lighter shades of blue are pretty indistinguishable from eachother, which is a shame. But still, I'm more of a "process knitter" than a "product one" - it's the act of knitting and learning the techniques that appeals, more than whatever the finished object turns out to be. Otherwise, I'd be pondering driving up to Lansing tomorrow and buying a new kit from Threadbear and starting all over again...

Olympics - Day 1

2006-02-11T11:38:00.000-05:00

Well I cast on around 2:30pm, while watching the opening ceremonies. Some of the stuff seemed a little slow moving, but the "sparks" on rollerblades, the fireworks, the lighting of the flame itself, and Pavarotti were all rather impressive. And, speaking of impressive (heh), here's my Day 1 progress:

It's fun to be knitting fair isle again. This yarn is a lot more "grabby" than the Bazic I was using for the hats, which apparently is traditional for fair isle. Hopefully it also means that the steeks will "stick" easier. I'm glad I'm using Addi's though - I need all the needle smoothness and slippiness that they provide. It's definitely going to be a sweater for a large teddy bear - I've got one option of my childhood bear, Misha, who I got in Moscow for my very first Christmas. If it turns out too large for Misha, I may have to go "model shopping" closer to the end.

I did do some calculations, and I figure that if I can knit between 12 to 15 rows per day, AND work in the ends as I go, I should be on target to finish in time. Each round at the moment is taking me about 8 to 10 minutes, so that's basically 2 1/2 hours of knitting time per day. I got 16 rows done yesterday so I'm a bit ahead, but will have less time to knit on Sunday. Hope that all the other 3999 Olympic Knitters are doing as well!

Pre Olympic Report

2006-02-09T23:21:00.000-05:00

Well, tomorrow is the start of the Knitting Olympics, and I figured I'd give a progress report.

Following on from yesterday's post, Gundel suggested that the odd looking heel might be due to a tension thing ... so I did end up ripping out both heels and reknitting them, taking care to keep my tension fairly tight. Here's the results - not perfect, but definitely an improvement.

My right foot isn't quite as deformed as it seems in the final photo, and there is a tiny gap where one of the heels rejoins the foot, but for a first attempt, I'm pretty happy with it. Plus that'll be hidden by my shoe most of the time, right? Sadly, the finishing of these socks, and the Jaywalker, and the starting of the toe-up Pomatomus, and my Sockapaloooza socks will all be put on hold for... Threadybear!.

This is my project of choice for the Yarn Harlot's Knitting Olympics, which, scarily, has more knitters participating than there are athletes in the actual games. (I'm also somewhat impressed that in a group of around 3000 knitters, I'm the only Kirsti-with-an-i.) I'm pretty well set: I've got my yarn, needles, pattern, all the notes from the Yahoo group. And the wonderful Amby has made us official "Team Detroit" tote bags to proudly keep our Olympic projects safe. Threadybear, by the way, is a traditional fair isle sweater, knitted in the round, with (eeps) 7 different yarn colours and (double eeps) steeks! Steeks are where I take a deep breath, and a sharp pair of scissors, and actually cut into the knitted sweater to make armholes. It's a somewhat scary thought, and hopefully the Olympic pressure will give me the courage to do it. I was going to calculate the number of rows so I could figure out what my daily target needs to be in order to finish in time, but that may be a tad too geeky even for me. Anyway, here's the "pre cast on" pics.

I'll try and update with Olympic progress over the next 16 days, but obviously most of my time will be actually knitting. Feel free to leave encouraging comments and cheer on my progress.

Short Row Heels

2006-02-08T15:40:00.000-05:00

Well class last night was a success. A short row heel was created and finished, and I think I pretty much understand the technique. Then when I got home, I did the heel on the second sock. It's definitely much faster than the heel flap/pick up stitches technique, and I think I prefer how it fits my foot. Here's the results from the top, from the back and from the side:

The minor problem is that I think I'm picking up my wraps incorrectly on the knit side of the heel. I love how the purl side looks, but the knit side just isn't matching it. Here's a closer look:


The nice, neat purl side	The not-so-nice, not-so-neat knit side

If anyone's got any suggestions as to how to improve it, I'd be grateful. What I think I did ... when I was on the second half of the heel, I'd knit to the wrap, slip the wrapped stitch purlwise onto the right needle, use the tip of my left needle to pick up the two wraps, slip the stitch back onto the left needle, and then knit all three loops together. Then wrap the next stitch (which means there are now two wraps on that stitch) and turn. Should I have been using a slip slip knit type stitch instead to keep the picked up wraps and the stitch together? Or was I somehow missing a wrap, despite being really careful to pick up the two wrap loops. I can't decide whether it's worth frogging and re-doing the heel, or just leaving it as it is, and trying again on the next pair.

I need to make a decision fast, coz this is the only knitting I have with me for the Red Wings hockey game tonight!

Hopefully this post will stay...

2006-02-07T10:07:00.000-05:00

Well I tried twice on Saturday to post about Mick Jagger and a red scarf knitted by my friend Lisa and the superbowl halftime show, but seeing as Mick never wore the scarf anyway, it's not too much of a disaster that blogger seemed to eat both of the posts.

Had a great time at SnB last night, and feel like I'm making good progress on the Jaywalker sock.

Here's its current state. Heel is turned, and the sock is back on the two circulars. Because of the curl to the stockinette, you can't quite see, but I'm about half an inch into the gusset decreases. I was glad I'd borrowed Amby's copy of Cat Bordhi's "socks soar on 2 circular needles", because I wasn't quite sure how you picked up the stitches after the heel turn. I like the sideways arrangement, and it's definitely going faster than the double points.

And, in a wonderful suprise, the doorbell rang on Saturday, and I found a box containing....

2 skeins of the most wonderfully soft, bulky wool from Wool in the Woods. It's 200 yards per skein, 17 stitches/22 rows to 4" on size 9 needles ... and was a gift from the amazing Poppy. I'd helped out my sister and her Yaya friends with a suprise gift for another Yaya who lives nearby, and this was my completely unexpected 'thank you'. I've got strict instructions to make something for myself, so I'm thinking some kind of shawl, with lots of lacy yarnovers to show off the gorgeous colours. If anyone knows a pattern, I'd be glad to get some suggestions! Anyway, thank you Poppy - it was above and beyond, and I'm very very grateful.

Tonight is my next 2 socks/2 circs class at City Knits - time to start the short row heels. Apparently, we're not allowed to leave until we've completed at least one heel. I didn't bother with pictures of the socks so far, because they're basically just like the previous post only slightly longer, with 11 pattern repeats. But tomorrow ... they'll hopefully look very different. I won't be SnB'ing on Wednesday night, because Terry and I have got tickets to go see the Red Wings play. (That's the Detroit ice hockey team for any non-americans reading.) But I'll be bringing my socks and knitting during the game - hey, it might be cold in the arena, right? Got to have yarn to keep me warm.

And now to work. Time to start the countdown til 6pm and sock class!

Blog stuff.. and sock stuff

2006-02-03T13:21:00.000-05:00

Blog stuff first. Until we come up with our "Team Detroit" button for the Knitting Olympics, I'm signing up for . Thanks Dixie!

And here is proof from snapshirts that my blog is getting somewhat obsessive about knitting socks:

At least Chocolate makes a good showing in there...

OK, now onto knitting stuff. Here are my current projects - all socks of course!

	This is the ubiquitous Jaywalker sock, in Fire on the Mountain sock yarn. It's perhaps knitting up with a tad too much bright pink for my tastes, though I love the overall pattern. These may end up with a certain family member who I know adores pink and bright colours....
And these are from my City Knits class - two socks at once, on two circular needles. That in itself is fun, but I'm also knitting these from the toe up, which is a new technique for me (and one that may pay off in other ways - see following paragraph!). I'm about two-thirds of the way through the foot, using an 8 stitch pattern called "Oblique Openwork" from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks, and it's worth clicking on the thumbnail to see the detail in it. The yarn is Lorna's Laces in "denim". I wasn't sure at first, but now I'm really liking how the pattern is working with them. Next Tuesday: short row heels!

And now for the lack of progress report. With the help of Karen Kendrick-Hands from City Knits, who gets even more obsessive about stitches than I do, we figured out how to reverse the decrease, and how to knit the rib so that the stitches would twist in the opposite direction from "knit through the back loop", thus solving the slant problem detailed in the previous post. However ... as you can hopefully see from this picture ... that opposite twist makes for a really thick ribbing, completely overlying the purl stitches, which again, won't work for the scale pattern. So I think I'm left with one option: knit the second sock from the toe up. The Sensational Socks book has a pattern for a toe-up sock with a heel flap, so it should be manageable. The gusset will look slightly different, with a horizontal line where the stitches are picked up, but that bit will be hidden inside my shoe anyway, right? And everyone will be so impressed by the pattern, they may not notice. Or else I suck it up and knit two socks the same. Any opinions?

So that's the knitting news. This weekend I'll be staying as far from downtown as possible while the Superbowl fever hits Detroit.

The Hippo Beast is conquered...

2006-01-26T13:58:00.000-05:00

..well, halfway at least. Yep, at SNB last night, I finished the first Pomatomus sock. I had to rip back about 2 inches, when it became clear that the toes were going to be much too long, and then have the frustration of picking the lace pattern back up. But I managed it, and here is the finished result:
Again, click on it for a larger picture. I'm really pleased with how it came out, and it feels really comfy too. So, of course, being rash and impetuous, I started in on the second one, with the plan of reversing the scale pattern. Here's progress so far:

I think I'm about 80% there, and probably should have swatched first ... but I wanted my finished sock! I realised that as well as reading the chart backwards, I'd need to change the "knit 2 together through the back loop" decrease into a "slip slip knit" or something ... but I'm not happy with how it's coming out. The scales and the edges aren't defined enough. Here's a comparison of both socks:
Part of it is the decrease; the other part is the twisted rib. If you look closely at the finished sock, the ridges formed by the "knit through the back loop" lie at an angle, with the right side higher than the left. This emphasises the longer curved edge of each scale, and makes the pattern stand out more. On my reversed version, I really want the left side to stand out, and I'm not quite sure how to do that. So I may very well end up playing around with some scrap yarn and see what I can come up with.

But it's still a very good feeling to have one finished. And in the meantime, I may just begin the Jaywalker with that wonderful Fire on the Mountain sock yarn.

I'm such a joiner...

2006-01-24T11:22:00.000-05:00

.. that I've signed up for not one, but two projects. The first is this one:

the Yarn Harlot's Knitting Olympics. I'm going to use it as the motivation to knit Threadybear - the traditional fair isle sweater, steeks and all, but in teddy bear size. Which will hopefully make the idea of cutting - yes cutting! - into my knitting slightly less intimidating.

Olympic Update.. For anyone else participating who'd like something more than the default button, Jen has come up with some wonderful creative ideas here. I'm almost wishing I'd signed up for the "Drunken ~~Lack~~ Lace Team". I may have to ask them to make a "British Ex-pats Team" because joining any Team USA is just a tad too far, but I can't quite go along with the "We're Better Than All Of You" UK option. At least, not yet. Give me a week and my opinion may change. And that is the end of the Olympic Update

Also, thanks to Dana's prompting at SNB last night, I've also joined in with the fun of

- Sockapaloooza. I read a bunch of posts about the previous round, but as I wasn't even thinking of knitting socks then, I stayed on the sidelines. Now, however, with Pomatomus (aka the hippo sock beast) finally on the stockinette toe decreases, I'm looking forward to this. Basically, you sign up with your sock preferences and foot measurements, then you get someone else's information. You knit a pair of socks for them, while someone else is secretly knitting socks for you. Sign up is today only and the socks get mailed out in May - so there's plenty of time to knit, but you have to sign up now!.

Hopefully finished Pomatomus pics will be forthcoming tonight or tomorrow. Then I just have to start the second one... In other boring blog news, I've tweaked the sidebar to more accurately reflect my current knitting progress and goals, the new knitalongs, and I also removed my blog links - mostly because I now use bloglines to keep track of way too many blogs which would take up all the page were I to list them all.

KnitDetroit has vanished...

2006-01-20T15:13:00.000-05:00

In case anyone from the KnitDetroit email list is reading this blog and feeling as lost as I am ... I haven't a clue what's happened, and hope that it's just some glitch at Yahoo's end of things. In the meantime, we are using the discussion forums that Julie set up a while back: http://www.evilemo.com/knitdetroit. Hope to see some of you over there.

Now I'm off to pack for the weekend and, oh yes, finish writing the retreat theme song...

Sunday night update...
Amby has set up a new group, until we can figure out what's happened to the old one. Join up here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/detroitareaknitters

Oh, and we did indeed manage to write an uptempo song about failure, the retreat was incredible, and I managed to get about halfway through the foot of the Pomatomus sock. Hopefully I can get to the toes during tomorrow night's SNB.

And now for some knitting

2006-01-19T13:01:00.000-05:00

So I'm still on my "small fiddly things on tiny needles" kick to recover from all the Christmas knitting. I'm pondering taking on the Yarn Harlot's Knitting Olympics with the teddy bear fair isle sweater as my project. We'll see.
Terry's socks got finished, as you can see here. I altered the cuff ribbing slightly for the second sock (the one on the left in the photo). It's a k2 p2 rib, but I started with only one knit stitch, purled 2, then repeated the ribbing ad nauseum and ended with the remaining k1. This meant that needles 1 and 2 ended with a completed 2 stitches, rather than the ribbing being "stretched" across two needles. As you can see from the picture, this gave me a much tighter cuff, and also avoided the slight ladder I was getting in the first sock. So that's all good. Terry loves them, but wishes I'd done ribbing all the way down the leg so they'd stay up better. Pah.
And now for the big project of the moment.. the Pomatomus socks from Knitty. This has become a matter of pride for me.I started off. Got through the cuff, no problem. Then I took them to Stitch'n'Bitch to keep working on them. Got to row 6 of the pattern and realised I'd made a mistake. Ripped back to where the ribbing began (with all the yarnovers and knit 2 togethers I failed hopelessly to pick up any earlier rows),and started a second time. Got to row 7 ... and yet again, something was wrong. Now it was personal. I ripped back to the cuff once more ... and headed home to give this my full concentration. This time I was sailing along, felt like I was reading the pattern and understanding how it was progressing and had almost finished the first repeat... when...
	See how nicely the scale pattern on the right of the sock comes to a sharp point in the middle? See how that fails to happen on the left hand scale. Yes, once again I'd made a mistake somewhere around row 5 or 6, and hadn't spotted it because I was so busy following what I thought the pattern should be, I hadn't noticed my count was off. I was too depressed to rip it out and start again a fourth time... so...
...I figured that there were two ends to the ball of yarn, and I might as well just start on the second sock right away. Thus saving my pride, and yet not abandoning the project. As you can see, this one is progressing quite nicely - and I was even able to work on it at last night's SNB. It's really a great design - the twisted ribbing makes for a nice tight fabric, and despite how complicated the charts look, most of the time you're just knitting the knits and purling the purls, and keeping the rib pattern going. Here's a close-up of the scale pattern as it should look:
	The yarn, by the way, is merino wool from the Fleece Artist, who also creates the most wonderful hand dyed colourways. So now I just have to figure out what to do with the second sock. I was pondering reversing the chart pattern so that the scales went in the other direction ... which would mean ripping back to the ribbing again, but for a good reason so I don't mind that! The other option is trying to weave in a lifeline just before the mistake, but that may feel like too much work. We'll see.
So that's the updates. Lots of yarn, and a fair bit of knitting going on. We're off on retreat this weekend and I'm hoping to get a good chunk of the foot done during the free time on Saturday afternoon. Keep checking for updates - I'll try hard not to neglect this blog so much. If nothing else, I now have to inspire my sister in her knitting efforts!

Sock Yarn Pr0n!

2006-01-19T12:43:00.000-05:00

So much for my self-imposed yarn diet ... I'm accumulating sock yarn like there's no tomorrow. But at least I'm knitting a bunch of it up. Here's the current stuff in the stash. And, as per usual, clicking on the thumbnails will give you a new window with larger images, for those of you who really want to drool.

	Lorna's Laces in their "jeans" colourway. I bought this at City Knits on Tuesday to use for the class I'm taking: 2 socks on 2 circular needles, knitted from the toe up with a short row heel. Lots of new techniques and hopefully a way to churn out even more socks! Sadly, Lynne wasn't feeling well, so the first class was postponed til next week. But I do have the yarn...

Here's the yummy Koigu Painters Palette Premium Merino that Amby bought for me at The Knitting Room's sale. Because you can never have enough purple sock yarn.. at least, not if you're me. And after finishing Terry's socks (be patient! Pictures are coming!), I've decided that I love working with this yarn. I really like how it knits up, how smooth and un-splitty it is, and how vibrant the colours are. So there's enough here for three more pairs.
	These are two skeins of "socks that rock" from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. The top colourway is "Fire on the Mountain"; the lower one is "Lapis". Yes, I am going to jump on the bandwagon and make Grumperina's Jaywalker socks, but because I like the pattern, and I really like how this yarn works with it, at least based on other people's blogs. And, just to add to its drool-worthiness, here's a couple of close-up shots.

And, finally, to show off just how wonderful a wife I've got, here's what she got me for Christmas. As you can see from the photos above, it's already been put to good use!

That's it for the yarn pr0n. Next post will perhaps contain some actual knitting!

Happy New Year!

2006-01-02T13:10:00.000-05:00

I had a very relaxing post-Christmas, and have now finally uploaded some pics. As per usual, click on the thumbnails for larger and slightly clearer images.

Here is the pile of knitted gifts, packaged and ready to wrap:

Here's a close-up of the labels, which I made using clip art in Powerpoint, and then printed onto card - two labels horizontally per sheet.
	And because I'd said that I was dying to start something small and fiddly ... here's the first completed and second started sock from the Koigu Premium Painters Palette Merino that I bought at The Knitting Room a couple of months back. These will be for Terry, and the colours are just gorgeous - slightly darker than shown here (the flash from the camera lightened everything just a tad), but just as vibrant and vivid. I was a bi worried that I wouldn't have enough yarn to complete the toe, but, as you can see from the scrap of leftovers, I guesstimated quite well. I love working with the Koigu.. and yay for the wonderful Amby who was able to get to the Knitting Room's 25% off sale after Christmas and buy 6 skeins (enough for 3 more pairs) for me! Oh, and on Jan 19th, I'm going to start Lynn's class at City Knits on 2 socks on 2 circulars, knitted toe-up with short row heels. Lots of new techniques and hopefully I can start whizzing through my sock yarn stash that's been building up.

And then I can get going on the Threadybear sweater, the Clapotis and Mariah, which should keep me occupied well into..oh.. Febuary at least.

One final plug - for anyone in the Ann Arbor/Metro-Detroit area reading this, Terry and I have a gig this coming Thursday at the Ark, in trio format along with a couple of friends and equally great songwriters: Trina Hamlin from Manhattan, and Colleen Sexton from Boston. More information is here, and it would be lovely to see any knitters or blog readers that can make the show.

Brief Christmas review

2005-12-28T10:52:00.000-05:00

No pics, as I've not had time to upload any yet. Christmas was generally good - and Terry and my own "Boxing Day" Christmas was as perfect as anything could be. My knitted gifts were generally well received - I'd packaged them up with a little card giving the yarn, pattern and care instructions. Again, pictures will be posted. According to Terry, I did such a good job on making that look professional that most recipients ripped it off right with the wrapping paper, and had to be told to look at it, and that no, this was handmade for them!

Best gifts received ... a ball winder and swift from Terry. My sister, in an amazing display of psychic powers, got me "handmade by Kirsti" labels to sew into my knitting - the very design that I'd almost been tempted to order for myself. So yay Sal! And my mother got me a "frame knitting" kit, which has 4 different means for knitting using 5 sticks, a "French knitting" spool, a lucet for braid making, and a 10 peg frame for knitting tubes/socks, along with a really nice booklet explaining the history of knitting, mechanical knitting and frame knitting along with reproduction illustrations etc. Should be very fun to play with.

We've got friends visiting and are off to Ann Arbor as soon as I get showered and moving. It's wonderful wonderful to see Andy and Cat again - it's been much too long. And I'm not just saying that coz I know Andy reads this blog. (Hi Andy!) He also managed to find a great book of modern poetic retelling of the story of Inanna - one of the nicks I use a lot online, which I'm looking forward to delving into. Plus we've been eating lots of chocolate which is always good. Oh, and I knit 2 more pairs of fuzzy feet for gifts for them... *sigh*. I think I'm just addicted. Though I'm more than ready to get back to socks right now.

I think I might be done!

2005-12-24T01:26:00.000-05:00

Or very very nearly done at least. Amby came round this afternoon for a last minute knitting frenzy, and here are the results:


Four pairs of fuzzy feet. I tried two different ways to use up the leftover yarn - stripes, or a two-tone effect. I can't quite decide which I like best. High contrast stripes are fun, but the colour shading of the two tone pair is also pretty neat.
	Here's the "head and feet" collection: 10 fair isle hats and 5 pairs of fuzzy feet. Not pictured are the gifts that have already been sent out: scarves to Vic and Reba, and my mother's present. All in all, it probably represents about 60 hours of knitting time (and maybe 90+ if you count the already-sent items)... I'd got it down to 2 hours per hat, and 3 per fuzzy foot, plus felting time. It's going to be harder than I thought to give these away!
And here's the complete Christmas knitted gift pile. From the bottom left, working clockwise: black and white booga bag; the camel scarf for Terry's dad which blends in to the sofa; a ruffled scarf with Trendsetter Dune; lots of fuzzy feet with another ruffle scarf lying over them; yet another ruffled scarf; the second booga; and lots and lots of hats. Tomorrow we get the fun job of deciding who gets which colour scheme, and figuring a way to gift wrap them all.

Oh, and bake more chocolate cookies to give as gifts. And it's already 1:30 on Christmas Eve Morning, and Terry's actually in bed before me for once.

So Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good Night. May your knitting be done, your yarn stay untangled, and may 2006 bring you only good things.

Should I be worried...

2005-12-20T21:42:00.000-05:00

... that I can now knit this without the pattern? 12 down, 2 to go. Then 2 pairs of fuzzy feet. See you the other side of Christmas - typing takes too much knitting time!

General ramblings

2005-12-19T23:13:00.000-05:00

Well, Christmas fast approaches, and I'm still frantically knitting. 4 pairs of fuzzy feet knitted, though the final 2 still need felting. 8 fair isle hats finished, 2 more done but needing the ends woven in, and one just on the needles as of 11pm.

I was once again the sole Stitch'n'Bitcher tonight at Sweetwaters ... but I did get a lot done - 2 1/2 hours on ..yep.. a hat. They're taking me about 3 hours to do, so I should be able to get 2 more finished before Christmas. And I think that'll be sufficient. (I really really hope so!)

Knitting the same pattern over and over has got me thinking about how I know I'm progressing as a knitter. A couple of things sprung to mind .. .speed being the obvious one. Since learning this two handed fair isle technique, I've been doing most of my knitting continental style (with the yarn in the left hand) which is definitely quicker, and less movement for my hands. The other is .. well, I'm not sure how to define it. But it's about being able to come up with creative solutions to knitting problems. The specific example is this: getting back to the fair isle hat knitting last week, I couldn't find my size 9 double pointed needles anywhere. And the pattern needs them as you decrease for the top of the hat - it gets too small to fit on the 16" circular needle. I didn't want to go out and buy another set (though I may end up doing that eventually) ... and rummaging through my shoebox of Addis, I found a 32" circular needle in the correct size.

So using what I'd learned doing the two socks on two circulars, I simply knitted half of the hat stitches onto the longer circular, and managed to knit the remaining half with the original 16". Then I simply kept knitting from one end of each circular to the other ... and managed to decrease the hat with no problems. And possibly slightly faster than if I were switching double points all the time.

I felt fairly proud of myself for figuring that out - applying a technique, problem solving, and getting the darn hat finished! And now I've boasted, it's back to hat number 13...

Whole Lotta Felting Going On

2005-12-14T18:06:00.000-05:00

Well, here's what I did this evening. The colours aren't quite right, but I don't have time to fuss with them before heading off to Stitch'n'Bitch tonight at the Caribou in Troy. 2 pairs of felted fuzzy feet, and 2 felted booga bags. I'm almost beginning to feel optimistic about this Christmas gift thing. Plus the red pair is finished but unfelted, and I've just started a red-and-green stripey pair. Hopefully I can at least get to the toe decreases by the end of tonight.

And, by popular request, here's the recipe for yesterday's cookies:

Chocolate Chews (from "How to Bake" by N Malgieri, given to me by Mary Fizzell who now has my undying gratitude.)

8oz semisweet chocolate
3oz unsweetened chocolate
8T (1 stick) butter
3 eggs
1 1/4 cups sugar
2t vanilla
2/3 cup flour
1/2t baking powder
1/4t salt
1 1/2 cups (about 9oz) choclate chips
1 1/2 cups (about 6oz) chopped walnuts
1 1/2 cups (about 6oz) chopped pecans

Line cookie sheets with parchment or foil. Put sheets in the oven, and preheat oven to 325^o.
Melt chocolate and butter together. Stir occasionally. Cool.
In mixer bowl, whisk eggs and sugar until lightened. Whisk in chocolate mixture and vanilla.
Combine flour, baking powder and salt. Stir into chocolate mixture. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts. Kirsti's note - it gets really really thick at this point. Hand stirring a must.
Drop tablespoon-size cookies onto prepared cookie sheets. Bake for 12-18 minutes, until cookies are slightly firm and cracked.
Cool on pans. If you can let them wait that long.

Apparently they can be fozen too, packed between sheets of waxed paper. I was impressed by how easy a recipe it is, and how scrummy the results are. Mary also recommended for a plated dessert, making the cookies half size, and serving two of them on a plate with some good ice cream and a drizzle of chocolate sauce.

If you make them, let me know how they turn out!

And now for some current stuff

2005-12-13T23:52:00.000-05:00

So, what have I been doing recently, apart from inadvertently insulting my few readers by wondering whether they get through all my drivel. I'm sorry - and I'm very glad that you are reading.

So here's the latest creations... and yes, we're still in the Christmas knitting frenzy:


For those who aren't getting hats, Fuzzy feet aka felted slippers are the gift de jour ... I've finished two pairs, but have yet to felt them. One of the red pair is done, and I'm knitting the heel flap of its mate. I need about 3 more pairs I think.. I've got some purple yarn, some rose coloured, and enough leftovers to make a red-and-green stripey pair.
	And in a "spot the difference" contest, I've knitted another fair isle hat, identical to one that I made earlier. That one was given as a birthday gift to our friend Rae, so here's its replacement. I love this colour combination - probably because that shade of teal/light blue and purple were our wedding colours.

And in non-knitting creating ... here's what I get up to while Terry is away in DC on a business trip...

They may not look like much, but taste delicious. It's a brownie-like chocolate batter, made with unsweetened and semi-sweet chocolate, with chocolate chips, pecans and walnuts stirred in. I'll post the recipe if anyone's interested. They're about as unhealthy as cookies get, but absolutely nummy.

So that's it. And now I'd better head for sleep, and stop procrastinating by hanging out online here and in Knitty chat. It's odd how much less welcoming our bedroom seems with no wife in it...

Eeps! Way overdue SP post

2005-12-12T18:26:00.000-05:00

Yikes. I found these photos on my camera while trying to download current knitting progress pics ... and realised I'd forgotten to rave about my final Secret Pal package.

So I'm going to cheat and reuse my post from the Knitty board, but with appropriate photos inserted. The parcel actually arrived on the day of my previous post...

I received my final SP parcel - and how could it be anything else, with "I heart Knitty" written all over the outside.. and yummy warming cosy winter goodness inside.

	Some "stash" tea (and how appropriate is that for a knitter??) - double bergamot earl grey. I've made a cup already and it is perhaps the best Earl Grey I've had ... definitely better than anything I've found here in the States so far.
A Burts Bees handcare kit - just right to keep my hands in knitting form in this cold Michigan weather ... gloves, handcream, cuticle cream, hand repair cream and healing gloves. And it's all yummy smelling too.
	And finally, my third installment of the most scrumptious dark chocolate by Dagoba - I'm going to have to track that down nearby. Terry's so far fought me for every bar.. ("Did you get another Knitty package? Is there chocolate in it again??")
It was all beautifully wrapped in tissue paper tied with neat variegated yarn ... Tricky, what yarn is that and where did you find it? Plus a card, with an unsubtle enough clue for me to finally figure out who my wonderful SP is ... the wonderful Trickyteuse. Her blog's well worth adding to your bloglines feed, or daily reads too.

OK. I'll post this, then onto more recent stuff.

Pictures galore

2005-11-30T19:54:00.000-05:00

I can't believe I'm blogging instead of using this valuable knitting time... but I did want to show off a Finished Object or two.

Here is the scarf for Terry's father for Christmas. It's Blythe yarn from Classic Elite which is 100% baby camel. I used about two and a half skeins, in a mistake rib pattern. It's about 5 1/2 feet in length, so it can be wrapped around a couple of times. It's light and warm at the same time, and I think it's turned out really nicely. And it's a "big knit" off the Christmas list.

And here's the most recent Booga Bag, waiting to be felted. Haven't a clue what colour-way this is, but it's Noro Kureyon as usual. I started this one when Sal was visiting, and the base was knit while watching "In Her Shoes".

And the reason it's waiting is... because this Booga is now 2/3 done. I've just started on the i-cord for the handle. It's Noro again, and because I've still got the label, I do know it's colourway 116. So I'll wait until they're both done and felt them at the same time. The colourway is fairly conservative for Noro, but will be fine for someone who won't be into the bright colours of the other bags.

I also did something of a splurge at Ewe-nique knits in Royal Oak on their "day after thanksgiving" 20% off all yarn sale. I've not been to this store before and it's pretty nice. The owners are friendly, and they've got a whole second room with spinning wheels set up. A lot of their yarn is cotton or baby colours - one whole wall out of the three yarn walls - which didn't really appeal, but there was some good stuff, and even their non-sale prices were very reasonable.

I bought some Brown Sheep Nature Spun worsted in purple to make these slippers for more Christmas gifts, and some in light grey to make this amazing braided scarf for me. That'll be in the 'after Christmas' when I can finally knit for myself again. I've got a bunch of stuff lined up: that scarf, clapotis, and the fair isle teddy bear sweater. And then I couldn't resist...

	The pile of sock yarn is from Mountain Colors, and it's Bearfoot yarn which is a handpainted, washable sock yarn. At 20% off. I pretty much cleaned them out - leaving only one skein which was in bright pinks anyway. Some I wound there, then I was running out of time, so the rest is saved for a winding party at Amby's.
And this is just the most gorgeous gorgeous laceweight yarn from Alpaca with a Twist called Fino. It's 70% baby alpaca and 30% silk, and is soft and I couldn't resist it. I also bought a pattern for a rectangular lace shawl to make with it. Yumm.

And with all this yarn, I had to finally cave in and find a way to sort and organize it. Plus Terry's been complaining that the spare bedroom was almost un-navigateable because of the bags of yarn. So a quick trip to Staples and I'm now set up with this:

	It's not quite what I was looking for - I ideally wanted something with another drawer to keep my finished items in and another deep drawer for works in progress - but it's still a great improvement. The top drawer has patterns and some of the finished hats and scarves for now.
	The next drawer down is sock yarn, and the lower drawer is the rest of the stuff (plus the one or two skeins of sock yarn that won't quite fit). On the top is the needle case my mother made for me, the yarn basket that belonged to my grandmother, and a shoebox that's currently holding all my Addi's.
	I won't mention that there's still the lower cupboard of the dresser full of other yarn that didn't quite fit. And a lot of this stuff is to be knit up over the next 4 weeks, honest. This from the woman who swore about 6 months ago that she'd never do such a thing as buy yarn she didn't intend to knit right away and build up a stash. Oops.

So that's the updates. I really ought to do more short posts coz I find it hard to believe that anyone reads all the way to the end of these long ones...

Ugg! Ugg!

2005-11-21T13:20:00.000-05:00

Here they are. I had the first one finished by Friday night, and the second one mostly done by Saturday, and finished up on Sunday. Very fun to knit, adorably cute to see, and I'm really pleased with how they turned out. These will be for a friend's baby for Christmas, and I may well do the smaller size (once I can find my size 3 needles) for the newest arrival in Terry's stepfamily.

I've also cast on for and got to the sides of another Booga Bag for Christmas - a fairly somber one in black and grey shades. Most un-Noro like! But good for folk who aren't bright-hued fans. Stitch'n'Bitch tonight, with 33 days left to Christmas. Eeps. Why am I even typing? Why am I even working when I could be knitting? I'm all for the suggestion our email group came up with, to give up work and sit on a street corner and knit until Christmas. Anyone want to join us?

Edited to add... The soles are the same Suede yarn as the rest of the booties and so are definitely slippy. I wouldn't suggest they be worn by any child who's walking (The sizes are supposedly 0-6 and 6-12 months) - though yes, apparently the puffy fabric paint on the soles does work for giving grip. I've been investigating the same thing for Fuzzy Feet.

More buying...

2005-11-18T15:50:00.000-05:00

Well, I was trying to be good and use up my stash. But then I saw the pattern for these and couldn't resist. I've got a friend with a 1 year old who's been craving booties, so I'm hoping that these will fit. But aren't they cute? Little baby Uggs. And sorry Sal, I don't think I can scale them up to fit Oscar.

So I went out to Have You Any Wool? which is becoming one of my new favourite yarn stores, particularly since my friend Lisa started working there. I invested in the Borocco suede yarn to make these, and some Cascade 220 for a scarf, and some more Bazic to do yet another hat (blues and a maroon this time) ... and a book I've been thinking about getting for a while now.. The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns from Ann Budd. This gives you the maths for making just about anything, in any yarn, once you figure out your guage. This means (and Sal, this is for you) that I can make mittens for Oscar in the yarn that's left over from his sweater and hat.

The book will hopefully also fix the mistake I made a day or two ago, when I was trying to teach myself knitting two socks at once on two circular needles. I figured out the technique, had done the ribbing for the top of the sock, and was working on the leg ... when I decided that somehow, despite measuring my guage and my ankle, I was making these socks large enough to fit a small elephant. So they got frogged, and I'll try again, this time using the numbers from Ann Budd's book. I'd like to get the technique mastered soon, as there are a number of folk on my Christmas list to get socks.

Meanwhile, the mistake rib scarf is getting longer ... I'm about halfway through it now. It's looking nice, and I think that once I block it, it'll be even smarter. It's definitely both warm and soft. Now I just have to hope that Terry's dad will appreciate it.

For now, it's cast on time for those bootees... watch for progress updates!

Bad bad blogger

2005-11-14T22:34:00.000-05:00

Nearly two weeks and no updates. And only one photo too (and that's a late edited addition!). Basically, any knitting time I've had has been spent churning out more fair isle hats, and getting started on the scarf for Terry's dad's Christmas gift. It's a mistake-rib pattern, in the baby camel yarn I bought in Salem. I love how it's turning out, really soft ... but the yarn is an absolute pig to wind. The skein is too narrow to fit round Amby's swift, and it tangles like anything. Still, I'm now into the 2nd of 3 skeins, and will hopefully have the scarf finished by the end of next week.

Anyway, here are the latest three hats. One very monochrome one, one very bright one (the sunrise hat!), and one camouflage one. This makes a total of 8 knitted, and 2 already given away. (Our friend Rae took the purple, blue and grey one for her birthday gift.)

Then it's onto socks (from the great book from my Secret Pal) and booga bags and fuzzy feet - again, more Christmas gifts. 40 days and counting *Eeps*. I may start making "backup gift" lists in case I don't get it all done.

And after all that, I am going to revel in spending January knitting only stuff for me. I will finally get started on Threadybear - the intricate, teddy bear size, traditional fair isle sweater, complete with steeks and seven colours! The yarn is wound, I have the addi turbos ready ...

.. and I also have the complete makings for Clapotis, in the bluebell silk from Hipknits, and just need to persuade Julie to make me more of her wonderful beaded stitch markers, since the two sets I had from her sadly vanished along with my old notions kit.

So nothing very exciting to report. I'll try and get more photos of the newer hats, and the latest Booga, once it's been felted. But hopefully this should stop me getting nagged at Stitch'n'Bitch for not updating my blog more often .

And a Hippy Halloween too!

2005-11-01T12:19:00.000-05:00

	After much thought and pondering about the contents of my wardrobe, I ended up reprising last year's costume and going all hippy. But of course, since the Big Hair Cut, I had to stop by a costume store and buy a wig to complete the look. The rest of the gear? All my own. Which is somewhat worrying. What you can't see in the photo is that I'm also wearing the rainbow socks that I knitted for Terry. And very nice they feel too.
Here's a close up of me clowning around once Terry got home. It was a pretty fun evening, despite Terry working late and missing all the fun. I handed out candy til around 7:15, when the rain put a halt to the trickle of late trick or treaters, and then, still in full hippy gear, headed out to Stitch'n'Bitch, where a bunch of us were planning on showing up and knitting. Sadly I was either too late or too early, as I was the only knitter there ... and the only person dressed up. So I took a deep breath and used all my extrovert energy to sit and work on the green cable/lace scarf for 45 minutes until giving up at 8:30 and heading back home.
	Oh, and here's how much of the chocolate still remains. I'm impressed with my restraint! In other knitting news, the Booga Bag is finished but not felted. I may try and do that tonight, so look for more pics soon. Once I'm actually organized enough to have a list of who's getting what for Christmas and what needs to still be knitted, then I may even treat myself to casting on for a new pair of socks too. I've been so jealous of all the Socktober fun that folk have been having. I suppose I could always allocate some socks as Christmas gifts and get both things done that way....

Happy Halloween

2005-10-31T11:09:00.000-05:00

I stocked up on the requisite bunch of chocolate treats this morning, and Terry and I even splurged at Hallmark yesterday (we were re-stocking the Birthday Card Stash) on this ... but can I think of anything to do for a costume? Nope. I may try and get out some of my more hippy-ish clothes - tie dye T-shirt, long patchwork shirt, skirt with patches on it, and possibly even the rainbow socks I knitted for Terry. Hmm. Or go the "princess" route with wedding tiara and see if I can still fit into the bridesmaids outfit from my sister's wedding, but I've lost the corset I wore with it, and I doubt the top would fit. All ideas welcome! Especially as our Stitch'n'Bitch group will be meeting in costume tonight! And in other knitting news ... I got my second parcel from my Secret Pal! Yay Secret Pal! Here's the opened box:
	See all that shiny green wrapping goodness? Inside were these:
	Yummy yummy yarn that's more bright purple than it looks here - mohair and silk and wool. My SP had seen my Knitty board post coveting Cameron Diaz's scarf from the movie In Her Shoes. Smart SP. This will definitely be used, as the little note with it said, for something for me.
A book I've been coveting for ages! Socks! Lots of yummy socks! I've already added 3 designs to my "want to knit NOW" list. It's got really clear explanations and some very fun patterns.
	Chocolate! Thanks to my SP, I'm becoming rapidly addicted to this Dagoba brand, which I'd never heard of before. The lavendar one in the previous package was scrummy, and as for these ... well...let's just say they didn't last very long.
Rounding off the package was this sweet knitting card, wishing me a happy Socktober! Thank you SP, you really made me feel special. I hope you're reading this, and beaming with pride right now! Happy Halloween to everyone else. I hope you get spoiled with as many treats as I just did!

Finally back in circulation

2005-10-24T22:21:00.000-04:00

Well I had the most wonderful visit with my sister and my nephew. You can read all about it on and see photos here and here. I'm missing them both like mad. Oscar is adorably cute - and the sweater I made is almost close to fitting him:


The sweater - slightly fuzzy.	A better shot of the cables

I also knitted a fair isle hat for Sal, colours chosen by her:

(She refused to pose with it on, so you just get my hand as a model

And here is the collection of fair isle hats to date. Guess what everyone's getting for Christmas this year?

But thankfully tonight was Stitch'n'Bitch to keep me occupied. It was a small crowd (Amby, I miss you!) - me, MontiLee and Lynne from City Knits. I spent about 3 hours casting on for..er.. yet another fair isle hat, and then putting 5 repeats on the green aggressive beginners scarf (remember that from months ago?). Thankfully the pattern was still mostly lurking in the back of my memory as I'd forgotten to bring the written instructions, so after ripping the first row back a couple of times, I was off and running. Metaphorically speaking, that is. Literally I stayed at Sweetwaters with a nice pot of their Jasmine Pearl tea.

One more project made its way onto my needles, but no photos as yet. Another Booga Bag. Mostly because I needed some "I don't need to see this" knitting to get me through two cinema trips, but also again to add to the Christmas pile.

So that's mostly it. Now off to catch up with everyone else's news...

Updates

2005-10-07T21:37:00.000-04:00

Well, Sally and Oscar arrived safely, despite taking a horrendously long time to get through customs (she was sharing a porter with a lady who had a load of luggage, didn't speak English, and got screened by customs.. so...). Oz was an angel during the flight, and was wide awake when they landed. We drove home, considered putting Oscar to sleep, but he was running around quite happily.. so where else would we go but IHOP for Sal to get her chicken fried steak dinner. Both of them are now sleeping.

And Terry and I should be - we have a wedding up north tomorrow at 1pm, so need to be leaving here hideously early tomorrow (don't worry, Tiff is going to take care of Sal and the boy!). And are we packed and organized? Of course not.

Knitting news is that I finished the Wavy scarf (Dana, the pattern is here, on Knitty.com). I only got 9 1/2 "waves" rather than the 10 called for, because I ran out of yarn. Which is odd, coz the previous Wavy, with the same brand yarn, gave me no trouble at all. Still, it's plenty long enough and looks just fine.

That's all for now. Expect minimal, if any, updates over the next fortnight, while I entertain and enjoy my sister and my nephew.

Oh, and happy anniversary to me and Terry. We met for the first time 11 years ago today, on Platform 3 at Victoria train station in London.

Progress report

2005-09-30T13:16:00.000-04:00

No pictures I'm afraid but a brief progress report. The "Sherwood Forest" fair isle hat that I cast on for on Monday night was finished as of Thursday afternoon. You've got to love chunky wool for quick knitting. I'll cast on for another one soon - I think these are going to be Christmas gift staples, as they're quicker than Booga Bags, and more fun to knit, and pretty unisex too.

And I picked up the long neglected Wavy scarf, which has now increased in length from 2 "waves" to 4-and-a-bit waves. So nearly halfway there. I'm resisting casting on for another pair of socks, or anything else, until I get this finished - plus there's all the lace-type stuff I started and then abandoned.

Self-discipline and finishing things will be the goals of the week. Then I have to sit down and make out a Christmas list, figure out who's getting what, what I have in my stash, and how much time I'm going to need between now and December to get stuff done!

More catch ups ... and current progress

2005-09-27T16:07:00.000-04:00

Lots of pictures, I promise.

In my final "catch up from the 2 week vacation", here's some yarn p0rn:

	Baby camel yarn bought in Salem. I needed a new size 2 double pointed needle, due to Terry leaning on, and cracking, the sock-then-in-progress. And although I resisted the $42 per skein hand painted silky-wool, the idea of baby camel yarn was too fun to pass up. Plans are to make a scarf for Terry's dad for Christmas.
And this, finally, arrived when we got home. My HipKnits silk order. I originally placed this back in July, to be delivered to my parents' house when I was in London, to save on postage. Due to some postal mix up, it never arrived ... Kerrie then said that she'd send it to me in America with no extra shipping charge ... then she had a computer crash and lost all my information so was stuck until I contacted her again. So here it finally is, and it's just gorgeous. A soft pale blue, with some purple undershadows. Plan for this is a Clapotis for me, I think. And, to make up for all the time and waiting, she enclosed the picture below. Sari silk in two different shades. It's just gorgeous stuff and the photo hardly does it justice, though it's well worth clicking the thumbnail to see the larger version. I haven't a clue what I'll do with this, though I'm thinking possibly a vertically knitted scarf, to take in the full beauty of the yarn. Suggestions welcome.

So that's the vacation knitting stuff all caught up. Now onto more current matters. At Stitch'n'Bitch last night, I finished the rainbow socks for Terry ... and here are her feet, proudly modeling them:

I did the toe of the second sock slightly differently - Terry has long toes, as I discovered while getting the first one to fit. I ended up reknitting it twice, and spacing out each of the 11 decreases called for by the pattern with a straight knit row throughout all the toe. This made it too pointed and triangular (see the sock on the left below). So this sock, I did 4 rounds of decrease, knit 2 rounds straight; then 3 rounds of decrease, knit 1 round straight; then 4 rounds of decreases. Much nicer toe shape, and Terry said it was more comfortable too. (That's the sock on the right, in case it's not obvious!)

And although I'd promised myself that I'd pick up Wavy and finish that before beginning anything new ... the joys of two handed fair isle called to me. Not only did I buy a whole bunch more yarns to make two more hats ....


... but I cast on for a new one in brown and greens. This one I'm calling the Sherwood Forest. I know. I'm hopelessly addicted. A lost cause. Or something. But in other good news of the day, my sister and the adorable Oscar are coming to stay from October 7th til the 21st. Anyone know a good place to get baby stuff....?

Two works of art

2005-09-23T17:39:00.000-04:00

Quickly, coz we should have left 5 mins ago...

The picture

And the finished hat.

Oh, and I got my hair cut today.

And a knitting update

2005-09-22T10:03:00.000-04:00

I got another wonderful surpise in the mail just before going on holiday - a needle case that my mother had sewn for me. She designed it herself, and apparently it's made from two cheap tea-towels she found. It's just gorgeous and works a treat, and I'm sure she could go into business making them should she want. My mother is great :)

Here it is, closed:
Here it is unrolled:
And here it is open, with all my needles inside. Note the lack of medium size needles - that's coz they're all being used for my half-finished scarf projects.

And here's what I've been knitting recently:

The socks for Terry are coming along nicely, though it took me four attempts to get the toe to be comfortable for her. My wife has long toes, so the sock ended up looking a little more pointy at the end than I'd have liked. With the next one, I may try doing 2 rows of straight knitting between the first half dozen decreases. And to clarify the pattern, from my horribly unclear earlier description. Rows 1 and 2: k2 p2. Rows 3 and 4: knit. So you get 2 rows of ribbing followed by 2 rows of stockinette. And it makes the little squares you can sort of see in the picture (it's clearer if you click on the image here to see it in large view). The stewardess on our flight back from Providence saw me knitting these, and wants 4 pairs for her grandkids for Christmas. Looks like I might have to learn that "2 socks on 2 circulars" technique sooner than I'd planned!

And here's my latest project: two handed fair isle. It's going to be a hat, if that isn't obvious already (Here's the class model if that helps). Tuesday night was my class at City Knits, where Karen spent most of the 2 hours teaching me how to knit continental fashion, and then showing me how to carry two colours at once, and change between them. I got the first 3 rows done in class; the rest has been on my own since then. I may even have it finished before next Tuesday, and it's meant to be a three week class. Oops. I may do a bunch of these hats as Christmas gifts too. And I want to start looking for fair isle patterns that I like ... wonder how long it'll be before I can tackle Alice Starmore stuff...

We've got a benefit concert for Hurricane Katrina tonight: Terry and, from New York, wonderful bluesy singer-songwriter Trina Hamlin. We're running the whole thing, sound, lights, you name it, which is why since getting back from holiday, things have been right back to their usual hectic-ness. Anyone within driving distance of Auburn Hills is very welcome - details, time, address and information is on Terry's website. Then Friday, we're off on retreat with the Young Adult group from church for the weekend. We've even got the theme song almost written - usually that's not ready until..oh.. 2am on Friday. I'll be taking hat and socks with me, and hopefully can show off some finished objects on Monday.

Have a great weekend!

Long overdue Secret Pal update

2005-09-21T14:06:00.000-04:00

	OK. So, way back on the Friday before we went away on vacation, I came home to find, inside our screen door, a rather spiffy shiny blue envelope ... addressed to me!
Inside I took out shiny green paper, and there was the cutest note, telling me why all these things just had to come to live with me, and lots of intriguing looking packages all wrapped in sky blue tissue and tied with purple ribbon (and how did my SP know that my wedding colours were purple and sky blue ?)
See how prettily they were all wrapped!

The packages contained:

	A sheeeep tape measure! It even took me a while to figure out it was a tape measure. It's all fuzzy and soft.
The sheep brought with her a really really nice notions case to replace the one I lost. I sniffled a bit when I saw this. It's denim, small enough to carry around but large enough to fit stuff in, and a nice sturdy zip. And - the piece de resistance - it's got my name on it! In purple letters, it says "Kirsti's notions". Now my SP knows I'll think of her every time I knit, and nobody will ever mistake my notions case for anything else.
	And the case wasn't empty, oh no. Inside was a riot of purple ribbon, tied around: cable needles (in purple!), a crochet hook (purple again!!), a yellow tape measure, some sock shaped point protectors (very appropriate with all the sock knitting I'm doing right now) and some really nice purple yarn scissors. I'm all set up and ready to go again!
	And finally... some amaaazing looking chocolate by Dagoba - organic, dark chocolate (yummm) with blueberies and lavender. I've been really good and kept it in the fridge for now ... but I know that it won't last much longer.

So yay to my Secret Pal for making my day, and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to post. The Notions bag has now been with me on vacation and to City Knits last night and has been much admired. It'll get appreciated once more at Stitch'n'Bitch this coming Monday. Thank you so much, and I only hope that your SP is spoiling you as much as you are me.

Very quickly

2005-09-19T21:53:00.000-04:00

We're safely back from a wonderful vacation. I've got heaps to catch up on with this blog, starting with the wonderful package from my Secret Pal which arrived just before we left.

But I just had to share this ... we saw this picture in a gallery in Provincetown and I just fell in love with it. Couldn't stop looking at it. It almost made me cry. So, with some financial help from my mother, we bought the artist's proof. The colours are slightly different from this version, and you have to imagine it as a 4 foot by 2 foot size.

It's called "Into the Light" by Mike Massengale (and it's worth clicking on the picture for a slightly larger image.) Oh, and for anyone who doesn't know, I've been playing the flute since I was about 8.

Socks, socks and more socks

2005-09-09T12:08:00.000-04:00

So here's the photos I promised yesterday. I stopped by the Ferndale Stitch'n'Bitch last night - Michelle, I missed you! There was only one other person there, but I did get an inch or two onto the new sock. Which will be coming up in a moment. But first, the finished pair of pairs:

	Here are Terry's turquoise socks - my very first pair. They're a little small for her, and the heel flap is a little too short. But I'm pleased with how they turned out anywy.
These are my finished broadripple pair, though the colour isn't quite right - it's less yellow-y and definitely brighter. Click on the thumbnail for a larger version where you can see the lace pattern more clearly. Really fun to knit, even with the stretchy Cascade Fixation yarn.

Full information on those socks are in my Finished Object blog. And here is the current pair (well, single if we're being precise...):

Can you see how the ribbing is sort of forming these little squares? I gave the pattern in the previous post - basically you knit two rounds in k2 p2 ribbing, followed by two rounds in k2 p2 stockinette. I'm onto the heel flap, and hope to get onto the foot by the end of today. I'm playing flute at a wedding this afternoon, which will cut into my knitting time, but it should be relatively fast knitting from here on.

Have a great weekend! We're off on vacation to Provincetown next week, from Tuesday til the following Monday. I'll be taking a bunch of knitting with me - socks, of course, and probably the long-neglected Wavy scarf to finish. This'll be Terry's first vacation this summer, and we're really looking forward to the time alone together. We'll be staying with her sister and sister's partner, who have a summer house in P'town. I've never been out to the cape before, but love being near water. If anyone knows of any yarn stores around there, or anything else fun to do .... leave me a comment!

Bad bad blogger

2005-09-08T13:39:00.000-04:00

I know. I tease you with pictures and promises of socks and then ... silence. Suffice it to say that the Broadripple socks were finished by last Friday and have been worn several times since then, despite the sunshine and heat in Detroit this past week. And yes I have pictures of them on my feet, and the turquoise First Socks Ever on Terry's feet, and yes, I still have to get them off the camera.

I have, of course, already cast on for pair number 3, using some of the Regia sock yarn I ordered from LittleKnits. They're definitely on the thick/wooly side, but should be nice and warm for winter. Plus Terry likes how the colours are coming out, so this pair may be for her, to make up for the not-quite-big-enough turquoise pair. I'm knitting the leg in the pattern stitch from the frogged cotton one - Rows 1 & 2: k2 p2 all round. Rows 3 & 4: knit. It's coming up with a sort of grid-like ribbing, where it's actually the pearl bumps that are making the horizontal lines. Hard to describe, but I'll see if I can get a photo that shows it.

I've also discovered I'm very very good at losing sock needles. I went to pick up the sock last night and could not find my free needle to start knitting. Nor could I find the 5th one that came in the set. This is not good. I can see me having to invest in 5 pairs of size 1, 2 and 3 double pointed needles just to get through the next few sock adventures.

In other news, the new Knitty is out. I'm rather like the Samus cardigan (though definitely not in orange), but was also pondering trying to adapt it to a sweater like this eerily similar Kepler one. However, the Kepler sizes are just too small (since when does 41" count as XXL - Samus's XXL is 56" around. That's quite the discrepancy!), so I'd need to use the Samus cable and stitch count, but just knit it like the Kepler, and try to adjust the shaping as I go. Plus then I tend to prefer V neck sweaters coz they're more flattering, and if I spend all this time knitting something for me I want it to look as fabulous as possible ... so that would mean more sweater alteration. And I don't think I'm that advanced a knitter to try combining two patterns and creating a brand new neckline all at once. I may just forget it and either knit Samus "as is" but in a nice deep green, or start on Mariah instead.

And now I have a paper to finish writing, so I'd best get back to reviewing literature... Pics will be coming soon, honest.

One down...

2005-08-29T16:05:00.000-04:00

... and one to go.

The first Broadripple Sock started on Friday morning is now finished. I've given up on the cotton one, and frogged it. So 3 skeins of Pattons Grace are up for swaps if anyone's interested and likes knitting in cotton.

Here's pics (please excuse the somewhat awkward proportion and the unshaved leg!):

Very fun pattern to knit, a lot easier thanit looks, and I love the lace effect. Plus, unlike the previous blue sock (which had a too-short heel flap and a too-short foot), this one fits me really nicely. I'm hoping the stretchy yarn will mean that it fits Terry as well.

Now on to knit its partner...

Friday updates

2005-08-26T09:50:00.000-04:00

I'll try and make this a short post.. we'll see. There's not really much to report, except that I've updated my Finished Objects blog to include all the Top Secret Projects. Here, for example, is the Sparkly Pink Scarf that was TSP 3, as modelled by my sister, and in close-up.

And here is her Booga Bag (TSP 4)

The socks will be joining them as soon as the ends are woven in, and I can get a good picture of them on Terry's feet. She loves them, though they are a little thick to be anything but bedsocks really.

I cast on the Patons Grace cotton yarn from the previous post to start more socks, but I've almost decided to rip out the 3 inches I've got done. Being cotton, there's no stretch to the yarn, so I have to knit it fairly tightly, which is hard on the hands, especially on size 2 needles. Plus I have this suspicion that they'll bag and fall down around my ankles as soon as I put them on . Now while I may have been used to this at school, it's not what I want from socks now. So if anyone has any suggestions on how to use the yarn, let me know. Otherwise I'll take at least the 2 unused skeins back to Michaels.

So I did cast on with the Cascade Fixation sock yarn I bought at Threadbear last month, and am having great fun with the Broadripple socks from Knitty. Funnily enough, the pattern was designed by one of Threadbear's owners, which makes it all the more appropriate. I'm liking this one a lot. Here are the Socks So Far:


Cotton Sock in basketweave pattern (Rows 1&2: k2p2, Rows 3&4: k)	Cascade Fixation sock in ripple pattern held up by my lovely wife

The other knitting news is slightly less fun: I finally got through to British Airways at Metro Detroit airport, and nobody had found my notions case. So I've lost all my crochet hooks (including one that was from my mum), my stitch markers, cable needles, tapestry needles, tape measure, yarn scraps etc etc. Serves me right for not paying closer attention to my stuff I guess. Oh well.

We've got dinner guests tonight, so I'll be cooking stuffed pancakes (though I was somewhat tempted to try out Michelle's Honey Mustard Chicken recipe) which means some shopping, and a lot of house tidying have to happen between now and 7pm. Have a great weekend! (And so much for a short post! Hah! I couldn't be concise if an abstract depended upon it...)

Photos and Finished Objects

2005-08-24T13:04:00.000-04:00

So, to follow on from a couple of posts ago... here are the promised photos.

	This is my grandmother's knitting basket, now stacked up with all my newest yarn purchases. The stuff I couldn't remember from yesterday was Rowan's Wool Cotton - that's the yummy balls of the muted blue and the gold at the front. I've got three skeins of each, and may try and do stripey socks or something. If anyone's got any suggestions, let me know.
Here is the basket from another angle, showing more of the yummy yarns, plus the needles that my mother had collected from antique shops etc.
	And here are the needles, a little bit closer up (sorry - I've not got photo editing software onto my new laptop yet, so I can't crop and resize and colour adjust like I want to yet). Note the built in crochet hook on the very bottom pair of needles. I think the top pair might be rosewood - they certainly have that warm grain about them. They're also all incredibly long, and I'm still not quite sure what to use them for. Sizes range from 8s to 11s.
This was my most recent yarn splurge. I was in Michaels yesterday shopping for goodies for my Secret Pal, and couldn't resist the colours in this yarn. It's 100% cotton, so I'll have to knit it fairly tight on small needles, because it'll want to stretch and relax. Yet again I prove to be a sucker for purple and teals.

And why the reason for all this fine yarn and talk of socks? Well ... after being inspired by a bunch of my fellow knit bloggers, I decided that socks would be the perfect thing to knit on an 8 hour airplane flight to England - small, less chance of elbowing my neighbour, and definitely a conversation starter. So the Friday before I flew out, I went to the wonderful City Knits and the pusher^H^H^H^H kind and helpful staff there sold me a multi-size pattern (5 sizes of sock from baby to mens, in worsted, sport and fingering weight yarns) and some size 6 needles, and the "cheap and dirty" wool I asked for, so that if I did mess up my very first pair of socks, it wasn't on the expensive, hand painted merino yarn.

So I cast on during the flight to London, knitted when I had a spare moment or two, and, with a final burst at Stitch'n'Bitch this past Monday, I hereby present ... my very first pair of socks!


Turquoise blue socks for Terry	The socks checking out our rather impressive crop of beefsteak tomatoes this morning

The yarn is Heritage Easy Care 8 - an 8 ply superwash wool. I didn't like it much: it's fairly heavy (somewhere between sport and worsted weight), and most annoyingly, kept untwisting as I wrapped it for each stitch, so I always had stitches that were splitting into 4 separate strands. Plus it's not as soft as I'd like socks to be. I'll see what happens after they're washed - and anyway, like I said, this was basically a practice pair. Still, I'm really pleased with how they came out, and now wish that I had used some more fun yarn that would make stripes or patterns or something.

Anyway I'm now hooked. A definite "darksider", as the GLB-knit list would have it. Expect more socks soon. They meet all my criteria for knitting: impressive looking, as easy or complex as you want them to be, and fast to finish.

The only downside to the trip is I think I left my notions bag on the plane. This was a really nice pencil case with a bunch of crochet hooks, stitch markers including hand made ones from Roxy and Julie, a tape measure, yarn needles and all the other little things that you need to hand while knitting. I've emailed British Airways, but I'm not holding out much hope. *sigh*. In the meantime, I've bought a new crochet hook and tapestry needle as the bare minimum to start with, and at least I can now weave in the ends on the socks.

I guess that's it. Long posts recently - but it makes up for the time I was away. I never know how to end these things either. Thanks for reading - and now I'm back to work.

Three Things Meme

2005-08-22T22:26:00.000-04:00

Sal tagged me a while back.. finally getting round to it. Here goes.

Three names I go by:
1. Kirsti
2. K or KJ
3. Kirstiana (Terry's pet name for me. Aww)

Three screen names I’ve had:
1. Kirsti (gosh, I'm creative and original aren't I?)
2. Inanna
3. Erish (short for Erishkegal, sister of Inanna. Generally used when someone else has beaten me to 2.)

Three physical things I like about myself:
1. My red hair
2. My eyes
3. My freckles. I even have one on the sole of each foot.

Three physical things I don’t like about myself:
1. My feet - large, wide and flat. With a bunion that returned despite surgery age 15 to correct it.
2. My breasts - way out of proportion to the rest of me.
3. My poor eyesight which means I have to wear glasses

Three parts of my heritage:
1. English
2. Polish
3. Jewish

Three things I am wearing right now:
1. My glasses
2. New work trousers in a size smaller - I'm shrinking, which is a Good Thing.
3. A bra (never without one *sigh*)

Three favorite bands/musical artists:
1. Terry Gonda (c'mon, did you expect anything else?)
2. Dar Williams
3. Indigo Girls

Three favorite songs: (today at least)
1. You Rise and Meet the Day - Dar Williams, from her forthcoming album My Better Self
2. Galileo - Indigo Girls
3. Gandhi/Budda (and the answering song, see here for lyrics) - Cheryl Wheeler

Three things I want in a relationship:
1. Acceptance
2. Honesty
3. Trust

Two truths and a lie
1. I've played flute onstage at the Royal Festival Hall, London
2. I'm allergic to chocolate
3. I have a russian birth certificate

Three physical things about the preferred sex that appeal to you:
1. Smile
2. Eyes
3. The connection when we dance together ... the fit, and the steps

Three favorite hobbies:
1. Knitting (newest obsession)
2. Reading (longest obsession)
3. Origami (previous obsession, but the nearest origami group is a 45 minute drive away and only meets once a month)

Three things I want to do badly right now:
1. Greet my wife walking through the door, but she's still at work *sigh*
2. Cuddle my nephew
3. Open the pack of Viennese biscuits from Marks & Spencer that I brought back from England

Three things that scare me:
1. Losing Terry or a member of my family
2. Not getting a green card and having to leave America in 4 years
3. The amount of yarn I want to buy, and the stash that's accumulating in the office

Three of my everyday essentials:
1. Internet access, especially blogger and the knitty board
2. Coffee
3. Cheek kisses from my wife

Three Careers you have considered or are considering :
1. Professor - that's what I need to get the green card to stay in the country
2. Musician - but my mother told me I didn't have the drive to succeed as a classical flautist
3. Educational Psychologist - except I didn't want to teach

Three places you want to go on vacation:
1. Anywhere that Oscar and my sister are
2. Australia
3. Touring around the States visiting friends and knitting folk

Three kids’ names you like:
1. Oscar - though that may just be the kid :)
2. Sebastian
3. Viola

Three things you want to do before you die:
1. Get legally married to Terry, ideally in America
2. Meet all the people I only know online, particularly Bernadette and Ricky in Australia
3. Make a difference in someone's life, to leave a legacy behind me

Three ways I am stereotypically a boy:
1. I never wear makeup - well, occasionally for music performances or for a special evening out
2. I have hairy legs - why bother shaving when they only get hairy again?
3. I don't particularly bother with my appearance before I go out. Terry has to remind me to brush my hair, or at least look in the mirror...

Three ways I am stereotypically a girl:
1. You can't have a silhouette like mine and not be a girl somehow...
2. I wanted - and got - a traditional white wedding
3. I love getting flowers. It's the easiest way to make me feel loved and special.

Three celeb crushes:
1. Amy Ray from the Indigo Girls
2. Uma Thurman
3. Orlando Bloom, especially as a blonde elf

Three people I am tagging:
1. Dixie
2. Michelle
3. Dawn

Safely Back!

2005-08-22T12:45:00.000-04:00

Well, I made it back home, safe and sound. The British Airways flight was slightly delayed, and had no hot food, no alcohol and no ice for drinks (and warm tomato juice just isn't the same as a nice chilled bloody mary mix...), but at least it got me back to Detroit. Sadly, the sore throat that had started on Friday morning didn't go away, and by Saturday it hurt to swallow, and my temperature was up at around 101. So I spent the weekend resting, sleeping and taking lots of paracetamol, and it seems to have worked: I'm feeling much better today, and back at work.

I had the most wonderful visit with my sister. She's just an amazing person, and I'm incredibly lucky to be related to her. She's doing a great job as a mum too, and Oscar is simply the most adorable, talented, brilliant child out there. (OK, I think my auntly bias may be showing a bit!). Sal, thank you for a wonderful visit. I'm glad to be your friend as well as your sister.

Knitting news ... I stocked up on some yummy Rowan yarn, but sadly, failed to find Addi Turbos over there. I was hoping that they'd be cheaper in Europe, but neither John Lewis or Liberty carried them, and I didn't have time to hunt around any more than that. No photos, so I'm borrowing from the Rowan website:

This is All-Seasons cotton in Glad and Grape. I got three skeins of each colour. It's 60% cotton, 40% acrylic, and although the website says "aran weight", I'm going to attempt to make it into socks - I've got a pattern from City Knits that does socks in all sizes from all weights of yarn. We'll see how that goes. I also got some other rowan yarn, single colour stuff, but I can't remember which it was (d'oh!) and the yarn's at home, so I'll have to update that later.

The other wonderful thing about this trip was that my mother gave me the wicker basket that my grandmother - her mother - used to keep her yarn in. It's lovely - shallow, and broad, so that the yarn stacks up really nicely in there. She also had some old knitting needles that she'd found in a junk store, and passed those on to me as well. Plus, when we were out browsing through a market, I found a couple of knitting pattern booklets from the 1940s/1950s, which are just hilarious. I may scan a couple of the patterns in. There is one hat that Terry thinks might just be on the edge of "hip and trendy" again now, so I may try knitting one up and see how it goes.

So apologies for the lack of pictures - I'll take a photo of the yarn basket with all my new goodies once I have more time back home. In the meantime, go and enjoy some of the pictures of Oscar that I took during my trip.

Brief update, and TSPs 1 and 2

2005-08-17T10:05:00.000-04:00

Quick post from England to say that all is going well, my sister and Oscar are both wonderful, and check out her blog for more updates.

And this also means that the Top Secret Projects that I've been blogging about have finally been given as gifts and so can be revealed to the world.

Here is the cabled hat I made for my nephew Oscar's first birthday as TSP 1, and here is the matching sweater that formed TSP 2.

The pattern was from "Top Down for Toddlers" by Deb and Lynda Gemell. Both pieces were knit in the round, so no sewing of seams, and the pattern was really well written and easy to follow.

The yarn was a 4 ply superwash wool from Shepherd yarns, in "oscar the grouch green", and was lovely to work with, very soft, unknit without splitting (thankfully) and blocked beautifully.

Oscar loved the hat - as you can see from the rest of the album, he kept it on for ages, and didn't pull it off like he usually does with hats.

So a success all round. Of course, now all my sister's friends are wanting duplicates for their babies .... what's the going price for a handknit baby sweater these days? ;)

I want to get a pic of my sister with TSPs 3 and 4 (and yes, 3 made it back from its stowaway inside Deb's Booga Bag to home, and then my wonderful wife sent it global priority to arrive here yesterday so I gave it to Sal this morning as the final part of her birthday present). Not sure if I'll have any time to update with those before I return on Friday, and I've certainly not had time to keep up with anyone else's blogs.

Sal, I see you tagged me with a three things meme - that'll also have to wait. The nephew takes absolute priority (and I'm only writing this coz he's sleeping right now.) The only remaining question is whether British Airways will have any food for my flight home in 2 days...

Off and Away

2005-08-08T09:40:00.000-04:00

So tonight I leave for 11 days in England, to see my sister and adorable nephew Oscar. The TSPs have all been finished, although TSP3 has, I think, been absent mindedly packaged up inside Suz's Booga Bag and mailed off to her. So it'll get to do a little travelling before arriving at my sister's house. For those keeping track, TSPs 1 and 2 are for Oscar's birthday, and 3 and 4 are belated birthday gifts for my sister. And I will finally be able to post pictures and show them off to the world.

I'm probably not going to have much time for online stuff while I'm away, but check back after the 22nd. And possibly keep an eye on the photosite link above, as I'll try and get Sally to add pictures of me with Oscar as we go. Plus I want to show off my new short haircut!

I've got knitting packed for the plane - the aggressive beginners scarf, and, if I'm feeling really ambitious, the pattern, yarn and needles for my first pair of socks. I'm starting off easy - it's a fairly heavyweight yarn, and number 6 needles, so no toothpicks just yet. Those I'm saving for the trip back home.

Catching up

2005-08-02T19:44:00.000-04:00

So I finally think I'm caught up with all the blog entries, knittyboard posts and everything else I missed while in Colorado. And here's a bit more updating from me.

Firstly, the amazing Roxy, who was responsible for my first ever RAK, had a mini contest on her blog, and I happened to be one of the lucky winners. So in yesterday's mail was this:

The yarn is actually a lot brighter pink/fuscia colour and catches your eye a mile off. And ... *drool*.. it is indeed Rowan Kid Silk Haze. I can absolutely understand why certain folk refer to it as "Crack Silk Haze". It's just yummy. Also enclosed were some gorgeous stitch markers, which I can always find a use for. So thank you hugely, Roxy. I'll have to consider a contest of sorts here and share the joy. Hmmm..

Next piece of news: progress reports. Most of my knitting time recently has been spent on two scarf projects:

On the left is the aggressive beginners scarf, now well into the second skein of baby alpaca, and also now one of my "mindless" knits - it's what I took with me today while I was invigilating the 3 hour final exam for the class I've just finished teaching. The second is the Lorna's Laces Angel angora yarn that I bought at Threadbear. At first I wasn't sure about the diamond patterning the yarn is doing, but now I think I rather like it. My next concern is that it'll be too short: what you see there, the 11 inches, is one skein. I bought four, as that's what the sample in the shop had. After a frantic email exchange with Rob, he managed to find one more skein in the same colour (701, Purple Club) and dyelot (9106), which should help a little, though I was hoping to get two more. I like my scarves long, and I think this one I may just keep for myself.

Then, tonight, I stopped by Gifted to buy another set of 10 1/2 double pointed needles to finish Top Secret Project 4 (the only one remaining) as I somehow have lost all but one of the set I used to possess. And of course, I couldn't just walk out with only needles, oh no. Here's the loot:

Oops. The Interweave Knit magazines are back issues and were 75% off, so that's allowed, right? It was a bargain. The problem came when I spotted this on the counter:

It's hand dyed sock yarn from Fleece Artist. The colours are slightly more muted than this photo shows, but it's a gorgeous blend of greens and purples and blues. And then the sock pattern in the top left hand corner caught my eye. It's from Cabin Feber and I've had good experiences with their patterns recently, and it has cables, which is my current obsession, and it's a sock. But of course, I didn't want to use my lovely Fleece Artist yarn on a first attempt,so I had to get some other sock yarn to practice on. Which is lilac and stretchy and fun. And of course, needles in a teeny tiny size (2s actually). They didn't have any wooden needles in that size, which is a shame, coz I much prefer working with bamboo, but at least the plastic is cheap.

And finally ... I was tagged to do this meme by both Suz and Michelle, so here goes:

Idiosyncrasy
n. pl. id· i·o·syn·cra·sies
-A structural or behavioral characteristic peculiar to an individual or group.

Write down five of your own personal idiosyncracies.

I'm a real grammar pedant. Things like "its" vs 'it's", and "fewer" vs "less" really annoy me. Eats Shoots and Leaves was written for me, I'm sure of it.
I can't stand eggs, unless they're really well "disguised". Scrambled or an omelette with lots of other stuff is about the only way I'll tolerate them. Soft, hardboiled, fried or poached? No thanks.
I equally dislike the taste of milk. I think it comes from too much being forced to drink those little bottles of warm-because-it-had-been-sitting-out-all-morning milk at school break time.
I want more than anything else to be able to raise one eyebrow, but I can't. It doesn't stop me spending lots of time in front of the mirror practicing though.
I have one birthmark on my forehead and one on the sole of each foot.

I'll pass this one on to my sister and Dixie.

Home safe

2005-07-28T18:15:00.000-04:00

And thank you to everyone who commented while I was away. The trip went pretty smoothly overall, despite a rocky (ooh, a Colorado pun!) start. I got to the airport at 11am for a 12:30 flight ... only to find that the first leg of my journey, a flight to Chicago, had been cancelled. Ooops. The best they could do was book me on the direct flight to Denver that didn't leave until 5:55pm. I thought about heading back home, but I'd already left the car at the parking structure and taken the shuttle, and there was roadworks .. so I decided it was too much hassle, especially because I had my knitting with me.

So I cast on for, and finished just as we landed in Denver, another Potato Chip scarf from the Trendsetter Dune I bought at Threadbear. This time I cast on 95 stitches, rather than the 90, so ended up with 780 to bind off. But it meant I had less yarn left over. However, I don't think that I could have fitted a single extra stitch on the 32" needles. Here is the scarf artistically draped in my Colorado hotel room:


On the entertainment center	And on the desk lamp.

Here is the view from my hotel room window - and yes, that is snow on the peaks of those mountains. I was staying at Beaver Run resort in Breckenridge, which is a fairly large complex, with condos as well as hotel rooms, and a conference center. And outdoor hottubs and swimming pools. If you want to see more photos, I've uploaded a whole bunch to my flickr account.

The conference itself was intense: a day and a half of pretty much the world experts in the field of mild and unilateral hearing loss getting together, sharing the knowlege-base so far, and then brainstorming all kinds of recommendations for everything from screening for this kind of hearing loss, to diagnosing it in young infants, to the pros and cons of hearing aids and other amplification systems, to early intervention services. I was asked to give a talk on the Tuesday afternoon, and it went OK - I was very nervous, and got a horrible case of dry mouth, so I talked way too fast, but people were kind and said nice things about it afterwards. Tuesday evening I ended up at dinner with the crew from the Center for Disease Control's hearing screening program, who'd organized the conference. Last night, I tagged along with 7 of the other conference attendees.

This was taken as we all were walking in to the downtown area of Breckenridge. As we walked along the river, I was oooh-ing over the pine covered mountains ... and then spied a singer tuning his guitar by the river, with all these old looking town buildings in the background. Just too perfect a composition not to take a photo. It's worth clicking on the larger version so that the guitarist isn't just a blob in the middle of the shot.

Dinner was great fun - we ended up at Bubba Gumps, where I had yummy New Orleans shrimp - just the right amount of spice, and a delicious sauce. And a local wheat beer from a microbrewery nearby, which was the perfect accompaniment.

So the flight home was uneventful: I did a good five inches or more on the Aggressive Beginners scarf and am almost finished with the first skein of yarn, so I'm now a third of the way through it. It's actually becoming close to mindless knitting for me now.

And then I get home ... and as per Suz's comments, there was indeed a box waiting for me. She was only meant to send a check to cover the yarn cost of the Booga Bag ... but, sweetie that she is, she'd mailed me the most yummy smelling "Juicy Ripe Watermelon" candle. I could smell the fragrance even as I was opening the box. An unexpected, but much appreciated, gift. Here's the candle and card:

A very nice gift to come home to. (And yes, for you eagle-eyed observers, that is indeed one of our wedding pictures in the background.) Now I'm off to catch up on everyone else's blog entries, and throw some comments around as I feel inspired. Hopefully Terry's on her way home soon, so we can enjoy dinner together.

Finished Object!

2005-07-25T08:24:00.000-04:00

... but no photos. Sorry. Top Secret Project 2 is finally finished, all the ends are woven in, and it just needs blocking (ooh, there's a possible clue!). And yes, this is the very impressive piece that Jodi referred to in her blog a few days ago. I'm certainly impressed with myself. All will be revealed, and photos will be posted here after August 6th.

Terry and I had a wonderful mini-holiday weekend in Windsor: staying in a hotel on the river, walking lots along the waterfront, getting to Jodi's going away party on Saturday night, eating some very good Ethiopian food, and generally relaxing and enjoying ourselves. It was good for both of us, and well needed.

There probably won't be any updates this week, as I leave today for Breckenridge, Colorado, where there's a conference organized by the CDC on mild and unilateral hearing loss in children - my Ph.D. topic. I certainly feel honoured to have been invited, and asked to give a brief presentation on Tuesday. I am taking knitting (the aggressive beginners scarf, and some Cascade Dune and needles to hopefully get at least one of those ruffled scarves done), so should have progress and pictures when I return on Thursday night.

Not sure how much web access I'll have (though I'm taking my laptop), so if I don't stop by your blog, I'll make sure I catch up when I return. Keep this space warm for me, won't you?

SEX

2005-07-20T19:26:00.000-04:00

Well, that title should get attention from some search engines or something... (For the non-knitters reading this, SEX is, of course, an abbreviation for a Stash Enhancement Expedition. Read on, and all will become clear. Or, at the very least, you'll see pretty pictures of yarn.)

Last Sunday was the Royal Oak Stitch'n'Bitch's grand summer roadtrip to Threadbear in Lansing. Three of us went - Julie was meant to join us but had family commitments at the last minute. Still, we're definitely going to plan an Autumn trip there too. Just as soon as my budget has had time to recover ... from...

This! Here's my Stash Enhancement from a store that I could quite happily spend all day and all my money in. Let's break this down a little.

Starting at the front. This is Kid Seta from Madil. According to Rob at Threadbear, this is the exact same yarn, from the exact same mill as Rowan's Kidsilk Haze ... but in a wider range of colours, and $5 cheaper per skein. It's wonderfully soft and fuzzy, and as you can see, has already found its way onto the needles. It's going to be a rectangular shawl, with a simple lace pattern. Coz I'm working my way up to...

This - 3 skeins of the same yummy stuff in a deep deep green. This is destined (currently) to become the Kiri Shawl from All Tangled Up. I figure that once I've done those two, the Fiddlesticks seacreatures one should be a breeze. Ah, nothing like optimism.

OK, continuing on. I also purchased a bunch of Trendsetter's Dune yarn, to make three more Potato Chip Scarves. These are destined for Christmas presents. From the bottom left working clockwise, the shades are 61, 06 and 84.

Here's the next splurge (and this was a total impulse buy..er.. unlike..well.. the Dune at least). This is Angel, from Lorna's Laces, in Purple Club. It's 70% angora and 30% lambswool. They had a simple 2x2 ribbed scarf on display and I just fell in love with how soft it was and how yummy it felt. And then they happened to have just the right number of skeins in the purple shade for me to make one too. Definitely destiny. Or fate. Or something.

And last but not least ... Cascade Fixation. This is a wonderfully elastic and stretchy yarn that is ideal for ... yep ... socks. I can't let Michelle and Suz and all the other sock-knitting bloggers be the only ones to have fun. So I have the socks, and a pattern ... and I've got to go out and do a needle purchase soon anyway... so keep an eye out for sock-happenings. As they say on the QueerKnit email list, I am indeed crossing over to the dark side.

It was a wonderful afternoon, capped off by a wonderful mexican meal. And then the next day, I got to show it all off at Stitch'n'Bitch. Jodi was there, and Amanda and Julie for a bit - and Terry got off work early so came along to watch this strange phenomenon. I got some good help and advice on TSP 2 - which is now probably about 85% done. I'm so impressed with myself, both because of how it's coming out, and also because I've managed to refrain from posting pictures of it here.

TSP 4 is about 2/3 done, but has stalled because I've somehow managed to lose my 10 1/2 dpns. I usually keep everything together for one project in a bag - and the green envelope containing them is no longer in there. I've looked around the house, but may just have to sigh, and go out and get more.

So that's the knitting updates. Wavy has progressed a bit, as has the aggressive scarf which I'm now really rather fond of. Branching out is starting repeat 2 (of 27!) but I think I'm going to take it with me to Colorado next week, where I should be able to get in some good knitting time inbetween trying to pretend to be a knowledgeable researcher.

I've been RAK'd

2005-07-15T14:40:00.000-04:00

I'm slightly late in posting this, but it's been a pretty busy couple of days, and I wanted to include photos to share. Following a discussion in the Knittyboard chat room, Roxy and I discovered a shared interest in origami, and she asked for my address to send me some origami paper she had lying around.

Little did I know what else would be lurking inside the envelope. Here's what it looks like:

Going from right to left we have ... Disney stickers; some very funky Old Navy stickers; origami paper galore in different patterns and colours and sizes (including some "bug" paper at the far left, and some tiny squres behind the yarn to make into cranes or maybe boxes); some origami folding instructions to get me started; a mirror (that's the circular blue open thing - I thought I was being artistic but didn't check my camera angles!), also out of view of the camera (I'm sorry, I'm a bad photographer) is a blue folded shrimp that Roxy made - very inspiring and fits with the sushi theme); a just yummy soft ball of Kid Merino yarn from Crystal Palace Yarns (I think this will maybe make my next Branching Out. Or something yummy and lacy. Any suggestions?); a teeny bottle of tobasco sauce; some snapple lipbalm, and finally at the far left, the coolest sushi stickers I could imagine.

In fact, they're so cool I had to lay them all out and take a picture:

Is it sad that I can recognise most of these sushi types? And also sad that I'm getting hungry just looking at them. Plus there's mugs of tea, and those little dark round circles are soy sauce. It's definitely worth clicking on the thumbnail to see the larger version.

Roxy, you are kind and generous beyond all measure, and I really hope that your Random Act of Kindness comes back to you in spades.

A quick quiz

2005-07-11T10:12:00.000-04:00

Well I guess I do use my Addi Turbos pretty much constantly...

You are "turbo" charged.
Fast moving and classy, you get things done with
power and grace. Your expensive tastes can be
deceiving, since what you really value is
quality and efficiency. As you're careening

around those corners in life, finishing a dozen

knitted objects each month, stop and smell the
roses. Don't miss the beauty of process!

What kind of knitting needles are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Weekend updates

2005-07-10T18:45:00.000-04:00

Firstly I want to thank everyone for stopping by and leaving their prayers and good wishes. Knowing that you guys, most of whom I've never met in person, are thinking of me and my family means a lot.

Brief knitting updates .... last night I took TSP 4 to see Carole King live in concert. She was playing at Meadowbrook, which has cheap "lawn tickets", so we sat on the grass, listened to 2 hours of wonderful music, and I knitted until it got too dark to see. I'm planning on taking either TSP 2 or the Wavy scarf to Ann Arbor on Wednesday and Thursday night, when we'll be at the Ark to see Nanci Griffith, Maura O’Connell, John Gorka, and The Chenille Sisters with opening act Matt Watroba on Wednesday and Christine Lavin, Susan Werner, Dar Williams, and Cheryl Wheeler with opening act Jan Krist on Thursday. Christine Lavin also knits, and invites people to bring their knitting for a mini Stitch'n'Bitch the hour before the show.

And, along with the horror of Thursday, there was a ray of good stuff ... this arrived in the mail:

It's the yarn and patterns from Fiddlesticks to knit the Sea Creatures shawl. The Aegean Blue is lighter than it looks in that picture, and should make a wonderful shawl. I don't think I'm quite ready to cast on yet - I'd like to get Branching Out more than 4 rows done first, so I've got more experience in lace knitting - but having it waiting is certainly inspiring.

Hope everyone else is having a good weekend. Tomorrow night is Stitch'n'Bitch, and next Sunday is our Great Summer Road Trip to Threadbear in Lansing.

I don't really have words

2005-07-07T18:09:00.000-04:00

It's odd, wishing that I were back in London, when all this is going on. My university departments were split between near Russell Square and near Euston, so I would walk through Tavistock Place, where the bus bomb was, several times a week. Now I see these familiar buildings and places, but with such unfamiliar and unbelievable happenings there.

My family are all safe - my mum rang at 7:30 this morning and told me about the news. I've not been able to turn the TV off since. I've heard from one friend who's out in East London ... there are so many more people I know there, acquantances, friends I've lost touch with, staff and faculty from my old university ... I'm just hoping that the statistical probabilities hold true and that they're all OK.

I'll update on knitting stuff tomorrow. Now, it's just keeping my hands occupied while I watch and pray.

Very quickly...

2005-07-05T08:52:00.000-04:00

... before I head off to work and teaching for the day ... here's the finished booga bag.

I took TSP 4 (that's the Top Secret Project series to annoy and eventually delight my sister) to our neighbours' 4th of July party yesterday afternoon, and got it well underway, while avoiding water balloons and sparkler damage. TSP 2 is about 85% done and everyone who sees it is impressed.

On Sunday we went down to the Taste Fest, and stuffed ourselves silly sampling various items from restaurants we either know and love (La Shish, Beans & Cornbread) or want to try out (Indian Masala, a couple of others). Also there was my favourite knitting store, City Knits, so I got to introduce Terry to the staff, and show her the treasure trove where I spend too much time and money. Lisa, who's an artist in addition to being a darn good knitting teacher, had devised a piece of knitting performance art in which 8 people shared a space and needles and different shades of yarn, from pale cream to a rich chocolate brown, to create ... well... by Sunday it was about a 12 inch long tube. I trust Lisa's vision to make it into some kind of sculpture. She'd also build the sturdy octagonal bench for all the knitters to sit round. I'm definitely going to follow the progress of this, knit on it when and where I can, and be a part of the binding off in September. I'm going to work with Lisa to get this project its own blog, so watch out for a link and photos.

OK. Now I've got to run and get dressed and face the day. At least it's a shorter work week. Happy Tuesday to all.

Friday - and Photos!

2005-07-01T13:59:00.000-04:00

Yep, at long last, here are some actual photographs of actual objects that I have actually knitted. Of course, most of my work has been on the Top Secret Project that I can't show you yet (though I am emailing out photos to those interested). But.. in the past few days I have:

Added a bunch of length to the Aggressive Beginners Scarf. I figure I'm about a quarter of the way through it, at least. Here's a slightly fuzzy closeup which was meant to show off the lace pattern and the 4 stitch cable in the middle of it.

And also...

Finished the Booga Bag for Suz. Above is its pre-felting stage, next to my first bag for size comparison purposes ... and below is its current status, drying over the same Kashi cereal box. Either towels aren't as efficient for felting as jeans are, or else different colours of Noro Koreyon felt differently, because this took 3 runs through the washing machine to shrink down to size. There's still a little bit of stitch definition, but I figure that Suz can always felt it more if she wants to.

Oh, and I also ordered the kit below in the Aegean Blue. So what if I'm not really a shawl wearing person? So what if I don't think I have any outfits that a person could actually wear a shawl with? So what if Terry wants me to turn it into a tablecloth instead? It's all about the process, right?

So that's my progress so far. Have a great holiday weekend if you're one of those "bloody colonials" celebrating it. Me, I'll take the fireworks as a belated recognition of Trafalgar Day.

Oooh, pretty!

2005-06-29T18:12:00.000-04:00

Somebody stop me. I'm feeling the urge to start a whole brand new project. But just look at this shawl? Isn't it gorgeous?

It's Creatures of the Reef from Fidlesticks Knitting, and it's well worth clicking on that link to see the larger picture in all the details.

They say it can be done by advanced beginners. That's me, right? And the kit isn't all that expensive either. Any thoughts on what colour to order?. I'm thinking possibly the Agean blue or the Juniper green, but they might be a bit dark to work with.

Tuesday titbits

2005-06-28T08:45:00.000-04:00

Stitch'n'Bitch was another blast. We had 8 people show up, and lots of good knitting and socializing was had by all. My TSP 2 is really taking shape, and I got some help with the first of two "new and somewhat tricky" bits to it. I'm hoping to get it finished by the end of next week.

Suz's booga bag is about 85% done. The I-cord is finished, so it's now just a question of knitting til I run out of yarn.

And in Really Good News, I've booked my flight to England. I'll be leaving on August 8th and returning on the 19th. I plan to spend most of the time with my Wonderful Sister and Adorable Nephew, but might try and sneak in a meet-up with some of the UK folk from the Knitty board on the Saturday.

And finally.. go help out a fellow researcher

After a long absence...

2005-06-22T14:59:00.000-04:00

... I return with yet another photo-less post. I'm sorry. But I figured that you'd rather at least hear something from me than another day without a knitting report.

So.. let's see. Top Secret Project 3 is done and off the needles. TSP 2 had to be frogged and restarted last weekend; then I took it to Stitch'n'Bitch on Monday and wasn't paying enough attention ... and didn't realise until I was packing it up at the end of the group that I'd made a fairly visible mistake in the pattern 6 rows back.

So I took it in to Lisa at City Knits on Tuesday morning (I was waiting outside when they opened at 11 - how sad is that?), and she said the easiest way would be to unknit stitch by stitch, row by row. Thankfully, she also showed me a neat way to hold the yarn that made it a lot faster. So the mistake is now fixed, and I'm back on track to make this the most fabulous thing ever.

I also cast on for Branching Out, got to row 3 of the lace pattern and messed up. Ripped it all out, cast on again, got to row 5 of the lace pattern before messing up. So that one's staying put away at least for a little while.

Suz's Booga Bag is progressing nicely. Two skeins of yarn have been knitted, and I've just started making the I-cord for the handles. I'm aiming to have it done and felted by the end of this week.

I took the Aggressive Beginners scarf with me today to the Detroit Habitat for Humanity Jimmy Carter Work Project 2005, where they're building 30 new houses in seven days. Terry and I were performing during the lunch break for 2000 volunteers with the Broe Rehabilitation Center Therapy Choir - a choir made up of people with traumatic brain injuries or addiction problems, and the staff from the Rehab Center. They're not the greatest singers, but they are definitely an inspiration. Singing helps them with their speech and language, as well as giving them self confidence and a feeling of accomplishment. Terry and I interspersed the choir songs with solo numbers. We were hoping that President Carter and Govenor Granholm would come into the main tent for the performance, but they stayed in the smaller VIP tent next door. Still, hopefully some of the sound drifted through. And it was great to give the volunteers some entertainment during lunch. Plus I got about another 2 inches done on this never-ending scarf. I took it coz it's my only project on wooden needles at the moment, and I thought the metal ones might be a security risk. But no security checkpoints at all.

And finally for today ... the Metro Times article on our local Stitch'n'Bitch group is finally published! OK, so they misspelled my name slightly, but Natalie did a great job. And last Monday we had 11 people .. so maybe by next week we'll be taking over the store!. Last Monday was also great because I got to meet Jodi Green, designer of the inspirational Mariah hoodie. She got the bus over from Canada, I picked her up downtown and dropped her back afterwards. She's a very fun person to hang out with, has some amazing tattoos and creates great knitting too. Hopefully she'll make it across the border another time or two before she heads off to school in Georgia.

Very briefly

2005-06-16T19:24:00.000-04:00

Top Secret Project number 2 is on the needles, and TSP 3 was cast on yesterday and finished about 2 minutes ago (though I still have to work in the ends).

The midterms are graded, the presentation going over the most common mistakes is ready for Tuesday's class ... and now I'm off home.

Anyone who wants to see photos of the TSPs, do feel free to email me. Unless you're my sister of course. Or Oscar.

Note to self...

2005-06-14T22:40:00.000-04:00

Top Secret Project (TSP from now on) Number 3 is underway. Plymouth Nocturne 1967 and Trendsetter Dune 95.

No, you weren't meant to understand that. The above is purely for my own reference in case I lose the yarn labels and forget what I used.

No real news, except to report back that I took the Booga Bag to class, seeing as it's the easiest project to drop at any time I was needed to answer students' questions. I got a good hour or so of knitting done during a 90 minute exam period, and discovered that one of my students crochets, and wants to learn to knit.

I stopped by City Knits to show off completed Booga Bag and TSP Number 1. Lisa was suitably impressed by my progress. I also picked up the yarn listed above, and a larger size set of Addi Turbo needles for TSP Number 2, in order to get guage.

And then went out for a yummy Italian meal to celebrate a friend's birthday. Good food, good company .. and now it's hopefully time for a good night's sleep.

Progress report

2005-06-13T21:05:00.000-04:00

Well, Stitch'n'Bitch tonight was a wash-out. Julie had food poisoning, so couldn't make it. I don't know what happened to Coley. So I was Nobby No-Mates, and sat in Sweetwaters all on my own for 2 hours, knitting. *sniff*. It was good to get some knitting time in, but I did feel somewhat self-conscious. I've posted a poll to the Yahoo group to find out why more people don't show up. There's 58 members, for goodness sake. You'd think we could get more than 3 folk together at a time.

Saturday's concert was a huge success. We had a great slot - right before the interval (that's the intermission for you non-Brits). Did 3 songs with the band, then Terry closed out with a solo rendition of her medley of When You Wish Upon a Star with Someone to Watch Over Me. As the festival organizer said, she hit it out of the park. We sold 24 CDs in the 15 minute break, and another 3 afterwards, plus got 2 and a half pages of names for our mailing list.

Seeing as Saturday was also Worldwide Knit In Public day, I took my Wavy scarf along with me. I know the pattern well enough to be able to knit this in the dark. Here's the current progress:

The yarn is Cascade 220 in shade 9402 - a variegated grey. I was worried about how the light and dark colours would work with the wavy ribbing, but I'm really liking the results so far.

I spent most of the time tonight adding to the Aggressive Beginners scarf. I realised one reason why I'm having so much trouble getting motivated with this: there's no definite "end point". With Wavy, I can count my way through the 44 rows of the pattern, and I know there's 10 repeats, so it's easy to assess how far I am. So I calculated that with this scarf, the pattern repeats every 4 rows. 10 repeats of the pattern add up to about 1 repeat of the Wavy scarf. So therefore, I need to do 100 cable repeats in order to have a long enough scarf. I have an end point! And, with 16 cable repeats currently done, I'm over 1/10th of the way there. Here's a somewhat fuzzy picture of the scarf so far. The larger picture has a bit more clarity in the details.

The other big knitting progress has been on the second Booga Bag. This one's in shade 95, the same as the original pattern. This one's destined for Suz, as per her request when I posted pics of the first one in progress. If she still wants it, that is, and isn't making her own, now she's picked up the needles again. Here's the current status, and the remaining yarn:

And just because I like the lighting and focus and angle, here's another shot:

And in lack-of-progress report... here's the current state of Soleil.

I'll get going on this again in the next day or two most likely, when I'm feeling slightly more focused. Or I might just start in on the Second Top Secret Torment My Sister thing. Hmmm.

Tomorrow is the midterm exam for all my students. I'm currently deciding which project to take with me. Any suggestions?

Booga-booga!

2005-06-11T11:53:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm making huge rapid progress on Top Secret Project 1, but of course I can't show you any of it. (If you'd like to see photos, and you're not my sister, feel free to email me or leave a comment, and I'll fill you in on what I'm doing. Mwahahahha.)

However, the other huge exciting news is that I finally felted and finished the Booga Bag!

Here's the photo journal showing its progress. As usual, clicking any of them will open up a new page with a larger image on flickr.com (Goodness knows why there's a whole load of blank space between this line and the table with the pictures. I can't see anything in my html code that would do it. I don't think blogspot likes tables very much. So I apologize for how ugly this post looks. Just keep scrolling down and enjoy the photos.)


Before felting	Into the washing machine (Note the artsy falling water shot)

After one cycle	After second cycle. Stitches pretty much gone, so good enough for me.

Blocking on a Kashi cereal box from Costco	The finished bag

As modeled by my gorgeous wife.

So yay me! I'm so pleased with how it came out. Now I can get started on the second one and begin to use up some of this yarn stash!

In not-so-good knitting news, I ended up ripping out the 6 rows I'd done on the Soleil. I broke all my own rules and started into knitting it late at night when I was tired - and made a huge mistake with the lace row that was pretty much unfixable - plus I didn't realise it until I was at the very end of that row. So I'll be starting up with that again soon. The Wavy scarf is now my "mindless knitting" of choice, and I'm about halfway through the first repeat. It's too hot to knit with thick heavy wool, so the Top Secret Project and Soleil will be my first choices in this weather.

In other news, it's a busy day today. I'm playing flute for a wedding at church this afternoon, then this evening is the Who's At First folk festival featuring Terry and 4 other artists. We get a half hour set, and it should be a fun evening. Then Sunday we're doing church mass in the morning (usually Terry leads the music group for the Saturday evening mass, but because of the concert we swapped with Augie, the director, who wanted a Sunday morning off anyway). Hopefully the weather will cool down a little. Still, at least we got the air conditioner unit in the living room window last night. We're still pondering splurging and buying a second one for the bedroom. Terry ended up moving to the sofa last night because of the heat. Don't know when we'll have time for it though...

Have a great weekend!

OK, so I lied.

2005-06-09T12:32:00.000-04:00

No photos. I'm a bad, bad blogger. And I'm truly repentant, honestly.

Class was fun. The store was somewhat chaotic, as the owner and two other staff members are off to a big huge yarn festival today, so they were running around with last minute arrangements, packing, yarn samples, things to knit in the car, etc etc.

But it all calmed down, and Lisa started me off on the Top Secret Project that I'll only post intriguing snippets of. Suffice to say that I was working with double pointed needles. Lots of them. Well, OK, four. It seemed like a lot, particularly as I'm still at the stage of figuring out how to knit without poking one of those tiny sharp pointed sticks in my eye. Still, I'm now at 10 stitches per needle, which is a lot easier to manage than 2 or 4 stitches.

And I think I'm heading out of work early to go and sit at City Knits and relax and work some more on the Soleil top.

Other knitting reports ... the Wavy scarf is about 8 rows in and progressing nicely. I managed to drop a stitch in the Aggressive Beginners scarf, so I'm going to see if Susy can fix it at City Knits today.. otherwise I may just frog the whole thing and call it a learning experience. It's just not inspiring me, despite the yummy soft alpaca yarn. The Booga Bag has yet to be felted. Where on earth (or at least, "where in America") do you find a zippered pillowcase?

And just to prove my project slut nature, I'm planning on starting the second Booga Bag for Suz (I even found the Noro yarn in the same colours as the pattern shows - the yellows, greens and pink), and the Branching Out scarf from Knitty ... because after abandoning one lace scarf, what's better than starting another? I've even got the yarn for this too, the Silky Wool.

And yay, Terry's home tonight.

Content coming later, I promise

2005-06-08T15:30:00.000-04:00

I'll do a proper update, with pictures and everything, after City Knits class tonight. Besides, by then I'll have started on a fourth project. Something Top Secret that I'll simply hint about in intriguing terms that will drive my sister absolutely crazy.

Til then... I stole this quiz link from dixiepeach. And even came out the same as her! Yay!

You appear to be a Knitting Adventurer.
You are through those knitting growing pains and
feeling more adventurous. You can follow a
standard pattern if it's not too complicated
and know where to go to get help. Maybe you've
started to experiment with different fibers and
you might be eyeing a book with a cool
technique you've never tried. Perhaps you
prefer to stick to other people's patterns but
you are trying to challenge yourself more.
Regardless of your preference, you are
continually trying to grow as a knitter, and as
well you should since your non-knitting friends
are probably dropping some serious hints, these
days.
http://marniemaclean.com

What Kind of Knitter Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

A project slut

2005-06-06T22:03:00.000-04:00

It's true. I admit it. Only six weeks into my knitting lifestyle, and I am non-monogamous. There was a brief period, from midnight last night until around 7pm, when I had only one project on my needles: the aggressive beginner scarf. I show up at Stitch'n'Bitch and pull out the scarf. Do I focus on the intricacies, refining my lace pattern and cabling abilities? Do I watch the slow, but steady, progress of this lovely green scarf?

Of course not. I knit about 4 rows, get bored, and cast on for the Soleil top. Then, once I've joined the cast on, and knit the first row, I decide I'm too fuzzy headed to start on the complicated lace rows, so I cast on for the second Wavy scarf, and finish up the evening by knitting four rows of that.

And those readers who've been following along with my projects will have deduced one other thing: the Booga Bag must be off the needles. Yep, it is. Not in the Finished Objects blog yet, as I haven't felted it. I think I'm going to do that tomorrow evening, as it's too late tonight. I also want to measure the pre-felting dimensions so I can decide if I want to make the next one any bigger.

Also planned for tomorrow is a trip with my fellow Stitch'n'Bitchers to the new yarn store, Gifted, that's opened up in Beaumont Hospital, literally 5 minutes drive from my house. Coley and I have promised not to spend any money; Julie needs to pick up some supplies. We'll see if that holds out.

Photos of the new projects once they get slightly beyond the "loops on a needle" stage. I'm off to make up a bed in the basement studio, as that's the coolest place in this way-too-hot-and-stuffy house. Hopefully that'll mean I actually get some sleep tonight.

Ruffles and ramblings

2005-06-05T13:48:00.000-04:00

It's been a fairly productive knitting day or two. The Booga Bag is so nearly done that I should really have waited half an hour, finished it, then posted this entry, but never mind. What is off the needles now is the Potato Chip scarf., modelled below by my gorgeous wife.

A very fun scarf to knit, and definitely quick. Though binding off 720 stitches takes longer than you expect.

Our trip to Lansing was a great success too. We picked up Terry's guitar from Elderly Instruments, she played a bunch of Martins and a really nice Breedlove 12 string in myrtle wood, but decided against buying a second guitar at the moment. Then, after missing it twice, we finally found Threadbear, and it was worth the hunt. I could have spent all day in there, so it was probably a good thing that Terry was with me to keep me grounded and stop me buying all the pretty yarn in sight.

I did buy some mercerised cotton in cream, and some amazing bamboo yarn to make Terry two Soleil tank tops for the summer. Pictures soon, once I've swatched and cast on. I'll start with the cotton one, and practice on that. We had a wonderful mexican meal at the nearby Hacienda Los Amigos too - really authentic, great chips and salsa, and portions large enough to make for 2 lots of leftover lunches.

Terry just left for the airport - she's off to New Jersey for work training til Thursday. So I'll drown my sorrows in yarn, and hopefully have a really productive week.

It's Friday!

2005-06-03T10:07:00.000-04:00

It's the weekend.. well, almost.

Last night Terry was working late again (she's off on a training course all of next week, so she's trying to get everything done before she goes) I went to the Ferndale Stitch'n'Bitch group. There were four of us there - three kntitters and a crochet-er. I got three more rows done on the Potato Chip scarf - so it's now up to 360 stitches. The next row is the final increase to 720 stitches, then I knit that row, bind off and I'm done. I'm concerned I won't have enough yarn to do the increase, so I'm holding off at the moment. So far I've put about 3 hours work into it, so I think a 5 hour project is a good estimation.

In Booga Bag news, last night I rewound the remains of the final skein of Kureyon yarn, so I could work from the other end, hoping that (as was the case with skeins 1 and 2) that it would end in the same colour as skein 2, and I could make a seamless join. No such luck. Skein 2 finished with this pinkypurple .... Skein 3 finished with bright red. So I've got a very obvious colour change. Oh well. It'll all look fine once its felted, right?

And ... in today's exciting news ... after a 2pm appointment with an immigration attorney in Ann Arbor, Terry and I will be heading out to Lansing. Now, the primary reason for this trip is to collect Terry's guitar, which has been in the hospital at Elderly Instruments after a nasty fall onto hard concrete. The crack's been glued up, the bridge reattached, so hopefully all is good now. But.. the fact that we'll be only 9 minutes drive from Threadbear Fiber Arts Studio which is apparently sheer heaven for those obsessed with yarn is too much to pass up. Hopefully I can convince Terry of the same thing. I told her I just want to go in and stroke the pretty yarn, and I'll leave my wallet in the car. I'm not sure she was entirely convinced. I wonder why? *innocent look*.

I'm thinking about making a Soleil for her before starting in on the Stitch'n'Bitch sweater. It'll be good practice for me, and I think she'd look great in it. So I could use this trip to get the yarn, right? That'd be... what's the word ... justified? Good use of my time? Something else new to knit?

Happy Friday anyway. Have a great weekend.

Brief updates

2005-06-02T13:17:00.000-04:00

Nothing huge to report.. just that I've changed the width of this main part, so that my entries don't go on for 3 pages at a time (I really should be more concise, but never mind.) (Well, I thought I'd changed it OK. And it looked fine from home. But here at work, the sidebar is scrolling off the edge. *sigh*. Back to template-tweaking)

And I've knitted the first 2 rows of the Potato Chip scarf, and it spirals beautifully when I squidge it up on the needles, so that's promising. It's slightly fiddly yarn to knit with, as I have to make sure I pick up the mohair strand as well as the metallic one, and don't split the fuzzy mohair. But with the shiny Addi Turbo needles and the pretty shiny yarn, it's such fun to do. Picture once it's a little bit further along.

But here's my pic of the day ...

My wife in my scarf! It's all good.

It's another one of those sleepy late-at-night shots - but at least a little more flattering than the hat pics. See that smile? Melts my heart.

Wednesday evening and all is good

2005-06-01T21:23:00.000-04:00

So, to update from my earlier post... firstly, I finished my Wavy Scarf! The details are over in my Finished Objects blog, but here's a picture so you can gaze and marvel!

At class, I carried on working on the aggressive beginner scarf (grrr), learned how to unknit rows to fix mistakes, and how to pick up dropped yarnovers. They're all so friendly in that store. Wednesdays and Mondays are definitely my favourite nights of the week.

I bought the size 13 Addi Turbos for the Potato Chip scarf, and swapped the stitches over. So here's what this looks like at the very beginning. 90 stitches there now. It'll double on each row, hence the need for circulars.

I made the mistake of only getting one skein of the Dune yarn, before re-reading the forum post and discovering it needs two. So, luckily, I found an ebay auction and bought 3 more skeins so I can have two of these scarves. They seem fairly quick to make - about 4 or 5 hours - and will also be good for the Christmas/Birthday gift stash.

Here's the Booga Bag, with artistically arranged i-cord (and yes, that really does stretch out to over 5 feet. It reaches Terry's nose. I checked).

I think I'm going to unravel the remains of the skein of yarn, and start joining it from the other end. This will mean that I don't get an abrupt jump in colour, coz the i-cord used up all the matching pink/purple/blue joining yarn. It'll mean that the stripe pattern will sort of reverse itself from where it is now as you go up the bag, but it should still look alright. Other suggestions? Comments?

And finally... for my next City Knits project, Lisa suggested that I start a sweater. (She's a bad, bad influence. Worse than I am on Dixie and Suz. Honestly.) I wanted to do the chunky cable one from Stitch'n'Bitch, but saw this wonderful worsted weight yarn in their sale bin, so the yarn won out over the sweater design. Besides, I'm not sure that a chunky sweater would be the most flattering thing on my somewhat chunky frame.

If you go here and click on through the patterns, it's the pink hoodie on the right when you reach the 9th click. My first choice is the sweater on the left two clicks later. We'll need to adjust the stripes, because they didn't have quite enough of the contrast colour yarns, but that's absolutely fine with me. My breasts are prominent enough without them needing to be highlighted with a stripe.

So what all this is leading up to.. is that I now have a HUGE yarn stash! See? It's by an Italian company, di.vé, and the yarn is called "Winter'. The green is colour 1211, the soft blue is 1215 and the grey is 1202. They've all got sort of shiny reflective strands spun in with the mohair. I have 15 skeins of the green, 3 of the blue and 2 of the grey.

It doesn't look so bad here, until you realise that the City Knits bag is full of another 11 skeins of green yarn. Oops. I said I wasn't going to do this. At least everything I have is assigned to a definite project. That's still OK, right?

What does this say about my priorities? I come home, get the camera out, pose and photograph the yarns, crop and resize the pictures, write blog entries here, here, and here. Haven't even brought the mail in. So now, at 9:45, I need to make myself some dinner.

Finishing things!

2005-06-01T15:19:00.000-04:00

Yay! My first Wavy scarf is off the needles, ends woven in, and ready to be shown off at my City Knits class tonight, along with the finished seamed cap. Shame it's currently 75 degrees really (that's 24 ^o C for you Brits reading). I'll take photos tonight, promise.

And, being an unrepentant addict, I've already cast on the 90 sitches for the Potato Chip Scarf from Knit Picks. I'm using Trendsetter Dune yarn in colour 86. Looks like this:

Yummy. I'm going to need to get more Addi Turbos in a 13 needle size though, coz with the number of increasing stitches, I'll never fit it onto a straight needle.

Also finished last night was the "between 5 and 6 feet" of i-cord that the pattern calls for. I knitted until it reached Terry's nose. I figured that was an accurate enough measurement, and besides, I'd knitted all through House and 1 1/2 episodes of Queer Eye (first season re-runs - the wedding proposal, and Butch the artist). So now I can use all my remaining yarn to finish knitting the bag; find a zippered pillow case; and then into the washing machine it goes!

I'll try and post more with pics after class tonight.

Quick update

2005-05-31T11:17:00.000-04:00

Just a brief, photo-less post to note that I've now been knitting and blogging about it for a month! Go me!

Memorial weekend was lazy and relaxing. We went to see the Revenge of the Sith on Friday night, then spent Saturday to Monday watching episodes IV, V and VI on DVD, to see how well they meshed together. Pretty good, apart from Leia talking about her memories of her "real mother" to Luke. Quite how she realised that her mother was "pretty, and somewhat sad" just after being born, and then held that memory to adulthood is beyond me. But it's probaby the power of the Force or something.

Knitting-wise, I've finished the second skein of wool on the body of the Booga Bag, so it's now about 60 rows. I took the advice of someone on the Knitty board and started on the i-cord for the handles. Then I'll be able to use all the remainder of the third skein for the bag. So I now have about 3 feet of i-cord, which is fun to knit, if kind of effortful to get it tight enough.

I made a mistake somewhere with the City Knits scarf - I think I dropped a yarnover.. either way, on the next row I found I had one too few stitches in one of the lace bits. Couldn't figure out how to fix it, so I just didn't decrease that row, to get it back to the right number again. I've stopped there - I may see if Lisa can fix it in class tomorrow. This is definitely the kind of knitting that demands your full attention.

And Wavy is now into its final repeat! 40 rows to go, then I'm done with this one. And, just in time to show off the finished piece, I've joined the Wavy Knit Along blog.

OK. Time to go get ready to teach. Midterm in 2 weeks, and I thoroughly intend to bring my knitting to class then!

Photos!

2005-05-26T17:48:00.000-04:00

Home from work, with camera. And seeing as it's such a nice day, and not 11pm which is usually when I'm photographing my knitting progress, you even get outside shots on our back step! The plus is that the colours are a pretty true match, though your monitor may vary. As per usual, clicking on any picture will open up a larger version.

Here's the amazing, magical, self-striping booga bag progress to date:

And squished flat so you can see the small base:

And the scarf. I've actually started the cabling bit, and I think it's all going well.

See? Daylight through the scarf! And you can mostly make out the pattern. The seed stitch is the bumpy bit making the border. The lacey bit is made by wrapping the yarn around (aka a yarnover) to make an extra stitch with a hole below it, and then knitting two stitches together (either purling them as one: p2t, or by slipping two stitches onto the other needle, then knitting them both together - slip, slip knit, or ssk. Which one depends if I'm knitting the front or back side. There. Knitspeak made easy.) Then in the middle is the cable. So far, it's made two twists.

Holes and twisted stitches... and it's all deliberate!

Here's the crocheted cast-on giving a nice neat edge to the piece (and it'll be even neater once it's blocked. I keep telling myself that):

And, in not-quite-so-clear-focus is the edge of the scarf. See how all the knitting into the back of the end stitch, then just slipping it on to the needle at the start of the next row is making a similar border to the crochet cast on? So pretty!

There. Now I'm off to sit in front of the TV and knit. Hmm. But what to work on? I think I'll try and get at least one more wave of poor neglected wavy scarf done.

Catching up

2005-05-26T12:07:00.000-04:00

Reports from this week's Stitch'n'Bitch and City Knits class...

Stitch'n'Bitch was great. Three former regulars showed up, so with Julie and myself and Julie's mum, we had quite the crowd. Though I missed Coley. And one of the former regulars was Suzy from City Knits, who was suitably impressed by my progress.

Another was Jen, who was kind enough to show me how to pick up stitches around the edge of my booga bag. It's now definitely bag shaped, though I'm a tad concerned by how small the base is looking. Before felting (which will shrink it), it's only just the dimensions that the pattern says it should be at the end after felting and blocking. We'll see how this one goes, and I might try adding more stitches and rows to future bags. It's all a learning experience, right? As a plus, I'm loving knitting in the round, and the bag is growing quickly. No photos right now, but expect some in the next day or two.

Then at class last night, I was introduced to the intricacies of matress stitch, and I sewed up the seam in my hat, so it is now officially finished, and documented in my Finished Objects blog. Here's front and back views of Terry wearing it.

Please ignore our cluttered kitchen, and focus instead on those beautiful, even, swirling decreases in the back of the hat. Please also ignore the circles under the eyes and general weary look of my beautiful wife. It was late. She's been working hard. She's usually much more gorgeous than these photos suggest.

So I then started the City Knits "Aggressive Beginner" scarf. I feel like I want to go "grrr" while knitting it. Actually, the frustration it's causing me, that isn't much of an exaggeration. Warning! Knit Speak Ahead! It starts with a crochet cast-on, which was entirely new to me, as I'd never crocheted before, but does make a very pretty edging, that is matched by slipping the first stitch of each row purlwise, and knitting into the back of the last stitch in each row. Then there's a seedstitch border for 8 rows .. and then the fun starts. On each row we have: 5 stitches in seedstitch. Followed by 4 stitches including a yarnover and a ssk or p2t decrease to make a lacework pattern. Then an 8 stitch crossover cable, which I've not quite reached yet. Then another repeat of the lacework, then finishing with the seedstitch edge border. I'm knitting it in a beautifully soft 100% baby alpaca worsted weight from Misti Alpaca in colour 7820 which is a deep forest green. Again, picture to follow, which will hopefully make all this knit talk slightly clearer.

OK, best get back to work now... Happy almost-memorial-day-weekend to those celebrating it!

Yay! It's the weekend!

2005-05-21T10:32:00.000-04:00

Well, the Knitting Room in Birmingham is as wonderful as the reviews on the Knitty board make it out to be. I had a similar experience to the one Jodi described in her blog yesterday. They had a bunch of yarn that I've only heard about, seen in photos or seen on ebay, some of it knitted up into sample swatches ... I can't believe how cloud-like and soft the Rowan Kid Silk Haze is, for instance. And the Koigu Premium Painters Palette Merino.. *sigh*. I think this may have to be my choice for Oscar's blanket, because it's so beautiful to look at. And if I'm doing rows of k53 p53, I'll want nice yarn!

So I splurged on some Nuro Kureyon so I could start the Booga Bag ... and of course, when I got home, my Ebay order had also arrived. It's not really a problem, as I think I'll be doing a bunch of these bags for Christmas gifts. What it does mean is that I now have the beginnings of ... a yarn stash!

Stash from the side

Stash from above

Starting from the grey ball and working clockwise.. we have.. 2 balls of Cascade 220 in 9402 (dark heathered grey) to make the Wavy scarf for Vic. Then 3 skeins each of Noro Kureyon colour 40; Noro Kureyon 153 (one of my Ebay lots); and Noro Kureyon 163 (my other Ebay lot). And concluding with 2 skeins of Noro Kureyon 134. And why only two skeins I hear you ask?

Because the other has already been used to start the bag:

I've done the 34 rows of garter stitch... now it's time to start picking up stitches along the side, bottom and other side edge so that this square becomes the base of the bag, and I end up knitting in the round to make the sides. I love all the colours this yarn comes in (Suz, I'm still looking for the original yellow one.. otherwise, pick your skeins from the stash!) and can't wait to figure out this next step.

Wavy is now well into the 8th wave. I'm hoping that with some good knitting time over this weekend to get it finished by Monday at the least.

And now on to normal weekend chores like laundry and vacuuming.

Edited to add.. I've just found these dinosaurs from x-treme knitting.com . How incredibly cute are they? And seeing as every little boy I know has gone through a dinosaur mad phase, and I happen to have the cutest nephew in the whole wide world....

Tag! I'm it.

2005-05-20T09:54:00.000-04:00

Dixiepeach tagged me .. so how could I not participate?.

Here's how it goes: I pick five of these "If I could..." sentences and finish them, then after I'm all done, I tag 3 more people to do it.

If I could be a scientist...If I could be a farmer...If I could be a musician...If I could be a doctor...If I could be a painter...If I could be a gardener...If I could be a missionary...If I could be a chef...If I could be an architect...If I could be a linguist...If I could be a psychologist...If I could be a librarian...If I could be an athlete...If I could be a lawyer...If I could be an inn-keeper...If I could be a professor...If I could be a writer...If I could be a llama-rider...If I could be a bonnie pirate...If I could be an astronaut...If I could be a world famous blogger...If I could be a justice on any one court in the world...If I could be married to any current famous political figure..

If I could be a librarian, I'd hide behind the shelves and read books all day.
If I could be a justice on any one court in the world, I'd make America allow same-sex partners to sponsor their spouse for immigration
If I could be a professor, I'd actually be able to get a Green Card (gee, can you tell what's occupying my thoughts this morning?)
If I could be a bonnie pirate, I'd swashbuckle and plunder my way around the Caribbean, hoping to run into Johnny Depp & Orlando Bloom....
If I could be a gardener, then I wouldn't keep forgetting to water the newly transplanted tree out front, and our yard would look a lot better!

Tag! I'm passing this on to my sister, Suz and Julie.

Now I have 2 minutes to get dressed, then go watch Starting Over while working on Wavy. After that, it's a trip to Birmingham to check out The Knitting Room and a stop in Borders to spend my 25% off voucher. Ah, the guilty pleasures of a day off work!

Post-class goodness

2005-05-19T08:06:00.000-04:00

Monday's Stitch'n'Bitch was great fun, though I felt a tad self-conscious with the photographer there. She was very nice, and didn't get in the way.. but having a gigantic lens pointed at your hands as you knit can make things a little intimidating. Hopefully all the recognizable pictures will be of the other group members who are much younger and trendier than I, and hence more the kind of audience the Metro Times would like. If the article ends up online, I'll link to it.

In "rest of my life" news, the grant application got submitted yesterday, missing a letter of support, but the funding agency said I can send that along by the end of the week. So that's all good.

In even better news, I got to my City Knits class last night for the first time in 2 weeks, and, with Lisa's expert help, made a bunch of progress on my hat. I learned how to use stitch markers and how to do the k2t decrease.

Here's what the hat looked like after 2 hours of in-class knitting (clicking on the photo will open a new page with a larger pic). Note the cute little orange locking stitch markers.

And, because I really am getting addicted, as Terry and I vegged out in front of the TV after class last night, I kept on knitting. And the hat is now done, the top pulled together, and needs only to have the seam sewn up. I'm so impressed with myself! It's even almost hat-shaped!

Other knitting projects ... Wavy is 6/10 done, and I'm aiming to get it finished by Monday. I bought the wool to start the next Wavy scarf.in a dark heathered grey. The pair of scarves will be gifts to my unofficially adopted folk music parents, Vic and Reba Heyman.

I splurged last night at City Knits and bought Addi Turbos in size 10 1/2 to make the Booga Bag ... the frustrating thing is that the yarn has yet to arrive. I paid for it 10 days ago, and you'd have thought that even standard surface shipping would have got here. I may try and use a different seller in future. I'll post here as soon as I get started. I'd like to have the base square done by Monday, so I can get help in picking up the stitches at S'n'B.

Oh, and hopefully we'll have some new members from the Detroit City Knits meetup, which was also last night. Recruit, recruit recruit...

Happy Thursday! I'm off work tomorrow and intend to relax and do nothing but read, watch bad daytime TV and knit.

Almost a week without a post...

2005-05-15T21:02:00.000-04:00

.. I can tell you've both been anxiously biting your nails.

Minimal knitting content, if any, in this one. Mostly because I have a grant application due in on Wednesday, so all of my time has been devoted to that. I do wish I didn't leave everything to the last minute, because it makes for all-work weekends, and minimal sleep ... but somehow that seems to be how I function best.

I do intend to get to SnB group tomorrow - the Metro Times photographer is coming, and I don't want to miss my chance for fame. Plus my Wavy scarf is half finished (5 out of the 10 "waves" done), and I'm almost at the end of the ball of yarn ... and I need someone to show me how to start the next ball. This scarf is for Reba, then it'll be onto the grey version for her husband Vic.

I've also updated my "future projects" list to the left - if I can get someone to show me how to pick up stitches, I want to make that felted Booga bag. And coincidentally enough, I've also won an ebay auction for 3 skeins of Kureyon yarn in wonderful colours. So that may also be heading onto the needles fairly soon.

The grant submission is due in via email by 5pm on Wednesday, so I'll be getting to my City Knits class. The hat is looking pretty impressive - I figured out the "make one" and now have the stockinette stitch rows knitted, up to the point where I'm due to start decreasing. I can't believe how professional all the rows of stockinette look, let alone that I've actually made it! Oh, what the heck, let's put in some photos. Again, clicking on the small picture should open up a new window with a larger version.

Here's the hat, in a slightly fuzzy shot:

Here's a close up of the stitching I've been admiring so much

And here's the half wavy scarf, with the tiny bit of yarn left from one skein of Cascade:

The scarf colour isn't quite right - it's not as blue as this image makes out. But you can at least see the pattern and the length.

Have a good week!

Safely Back Home

2005-05-09T21:30:00.000-04:00

A very brief post, as I'm just about ready to run a nice hot bath and then collapse into bed.. but I figured I'd update at least the basics.

The festival was wonderful. Great music, great people and we even had good weather. Mostly. Friday night was freezing, but it warmed up plenty.
I found 4 other knitters during the weekend, and several other folk who came up to me as I was knitting and made some remark along the lines of "Oh, I used to knit.." or "I wish I'd brought my knitting with me too".
I finished the Funky Scarf during Friday night's mainstage sessions. It was shorter than I'd have liked, mostly because I ran out of yarn, and it was cold, so I figured I'd bind off and wear the scarf to keep warm rather than putting it away, waiting til I got back home, going to Michaels for more yarn then finishing it.
However, it was an ideal length for my friend Sherry, who adored the colours in it, so I gave it to her. Sadly, I didn't get a picture of her in it at the time, and the weather improved enough that she didn't need it for the rest of the weekend. I will try and get her husband to take a picture of Sherry in the scarf so I can show it off here. My Very First Finished Object! Go me!
I drove all the way back from Aberdeen MD to Detroit MI on my own, as my wife is in New Jersey all week on a work course. This was my first Long Solo Drive ever, and, with the help of a lot of caffeine, I made it. Did 5 hours to just past Pittsburgh last night, and then the final 4 1/2 hours home today.
And I made it back in time to get to the Stitch'n'Bitch group tonight. We actually had 4 knitters (so a 100% increase on last week) and a reporter from the Metro Times who's writing an article on S'n'B groups. Photographer coming next week. Fame beckons.
My Wavy scarf is now 4/10 of the way done and looking wonderful.
Hat update: I did finally figure out how to "make 1" with the help of the S'n'B book and some chatting on IM with Julie from the group. I've got about another 4 rows of stockinette stitch to do before Wednesday's class, when we get into stitch markers and decreasing.
Tomorrow is the first day of the AUD 5420 class I'm teaching (Introduction to Aural Rehabilitation) at Wayne State, so I need to get into Serious Professor mode again. I just hope the students don't find this blog... .

That's it for now. Bath and bed beckon. Happy Monday.

Thursday Thoughts

2005-05-05T12:19:00.000-04:00

Well, I've not done much the past couple of days, as I've been sick,. My doctor diagnosed me with a strep throat and allergies, and has put me on antibiotics, Allegra-D and some kind of nose spray. Didn't even make my class on Wednesday - though when I rang to tell them, they informed me that the class was cancelled anyway due to a store emergency. So I'm still no further with my hat. The next technique I need is "make one" - I've got 2/3 of the way with the instructions in Stitch'n'Bitch, but I'm still not sure how to "knit into the loop from the back" to twist the stitch. And I went to knittinghelp.com , only to be overwhelmed by about 5 different varieties of "make one". So that's still waiting. *sigh*. Shame, coz after that one row of increases, it's just stocking stitch for ages, so I could really be moving on it.

Still, even without the class, the knitting lessons I have learned since Monday include:

Never knit after 11pm. You'll end up making stupid mistakes, and then having to unravel rows, and trying to re-capture stitches in the dark is tricky.
Keep your crochet hook with you at all times. Running from the bedroom to the living room, trying desparately to save that loop, is not a productive means of rescuing your knitting
Similarly, never knit anything more complicated than garter stitch when you're sick. The results are the same, except that your brain refuses to keep count of how many rows you've just ripped out, and you then have to peer at your knitting trying to figure out just where you are at.

Still, despite all that, I've now completed one repeat of the Wavy pattern - i.e. I'm 1/5 of the way through with the scarf. I'll wait with the picture until it's even more impressive, unless either of my readers put in a plea for photographic evidence.

We leave this afternoon for the Susquehanna Music and Arts Festival so I won't be posting until Monday at least. But hopefully I'll at least finish the funky scarf, and get more waves onto Wavy.

Have a great weekend, y'all.

Post-SnB waviness

2005-05-02T22:31:00.000-04:00

I can see that working less than 5 minutes drive from City Knits could cause problems ... still, at least I a) refrained from substituting a twice-as-expensive, but oh-so-soft merino wool for the Cascade 220 recommended for Wavy, and b) only bought the yarn I needed for Wavy, and just ooh-ed over their clearance stash rather than buying all the pretty pretty yarn.

One other Stitch'n'Bitcher showed up at Sweetwaters tonight, and we chatted and knitted for an hour or so. She's been knitting for 2 years, and has some wonderful looking projects, plus a load of green yarn to use up. So I started on Wavy, and she began a cloche style hat. Hopefully there'll be more people next week; apparently at one point there were at least 8-10 regulars at the group.

So.. after 25 rows, here is the Wavy scarf (again, clicking on the smaller image will open up a larger one):

It's very fun to do, especially figuring out the logic behind the pattern and moving of the blocks of 3 stitches. I'm definitely taking this one to Susquehanna this weekend. With this for a fun pattern, and the garter stitch scarf for funky yarn, I should have enough to keep me occupied. And after Wednesday, I'll have more to do on my hat too.

So all is well in Kirsti-land. Now I just wish my wife would get home.. it's 10:30 and she's still at work. *sigh*. It might just be me and Wavy heading to bed.

Monday Pt 1

2005-05-02T13:58:00.000-04:00

Well, seeing as I'm at work and only 4 minutes from City Knits, I may stop by there on my way home to a) show off the progress on my hat that I'm making in their Wednesday beginners class; b) see if any of the slightly-wonky-and-holey bits of said hat are fixable, and c) buy some more Cascade yarn to get going on the Wavy scarf so I can take it with me to the Susquehanna music and Arts Festival next weekend.

Tonight is the Royal Oak Stitch'n'Bitch gathering at Sweetwater Cafe in Royal Oak. At least one other person has posted that they'll be there tonight, but overall it doesn't seem like a particularly active group. I'll keep posting and showing up, and maybe also try the Thursday group in Ferndale instead.

Though my lovely wife might have something to say if I end up doing knitting things on three nights of the week. Plus of course, Thursday night would mean I'd have to tape The Apprentice. Hmm. Choices, choices.

Check back later today or tomorrow for a group and yarn report. That is, both of you reading this.

Introducing my sister

2005-04-29T15:06:00.000-04:00

Seeing as she was so kind as to link to me ... here's my sister. Confessions of an English Actor/Mum/Whatever

Works in Progress

2005-04-28T15:31:00.000-04:00

So.. after the previous introduction.. this is what's currently in my knitting tote bag. Clicking on any of the pictures should take you to a larger size view.

Funky Scarf

This is a simple garter stitch scarf, with Lion Brand Fancy Fur in Stained Glass knitted together with their Wool-Ease worsted weight in Blue Heather. Very funky, very fun, easy to knit, and the black furry bits cover any dropped stitches. The pattern, such as it is, is the Fireworks scarf from Stitch'n'Bitch.

Twisted Purling

This was my first attempt at purling, using a knit 2 purl 2 rib. As you can see, while there's definitely a ribbing thing happen, the stitches don't look right. This is because I'm lousy at turning 2-D pictures into 3-D actions. (Not sure how well that bodes for my future career as a knitter, but oh well.) What I was doing was putting the right hand needle in at the back of the stitch, and twisting it round to the front, then purling it. Oops. Luckily a video clip from knittinghelp.com and a few minutes with Suzy at my City Knits class last night got me sorted. As proven by....

The start of the hat

Here it is. The start of my simple seamed hat. The yarn is Cascade 220 color 9453, and Suzy talked me into buying Addi Turbo circular needles. They're certainly fun to use, though I'm not up to any kind of speed with them yet! That's about 8 rows of ribbing, and it's looking so much better. There's still a few wonky moments here and there, but I think it'll be fine once it's done. My goal for next Wednesday night is to finish up to 14 rows of ribbing, then purl one row .. then I'm ready to start increasing.

So that's where I'm up to for now. I'm also wanting to start the Big Bad Baby Blanket from Stitch'n'Bitch, especially coz I'm off to a festival for Mothers Day weekend, so will have loads of knitting time... but I need to find out colour choices from my sister, and I'm not sure if I can afford to splurge on any more yarn at the moment. Hmmm.

Getting Going

2005-04-28T13:44:00.000-04:00

Well, here begins something I guess. Welcome to Kirsti Knits. I'm 36 years old, a happily "domestic-partnered" lesbian, from England originally, now living in Michigan. I work as a researcher at Wayne State University, and this blog is intended for me to vent about, moan about, enthuse about and show off, my latest creative venture.

Inspired by some friends online, I've decided to take up knitting. So I went out and bought myself Stich'n'Bitch, then hit Michaels for needles and yarn ... and several swatches and half a scarf later, I think I'm hooked. My current knitting goal is Jodi Green's 'Mariah' cardigan.. I love the celtic style knotwork. Of course, I've got a long way to go to get to there yet, but it's always nice to have a vision, right?

I tried to go to the local Royal Oak Stitch'n'Bitch meetup this past Monday, but nobody was there. *sniff*. I also signed up for the beginners classes at City Knits, which was last night. Suzie was just lovely, and figured that since I could cast on, knit and almost purl (she corrected my technique and it's going fine now), I could skip the first scarf and go directly to the hat. The shame was I'd picked out some nice heathered purple yarn which I'd love for a scarf, but am unlikely to wear for a hat. I much prefer green, to go with my red hair. Purple however, as you can probably tell from this colour scheme, is my current favourite. (I'm still tweaking this colour scheme from the default green. Haven't checked the comments yet. So if random green stuff shows up, I apologise!)

So anyway, I got started on the hat, and I'm now knitting on circular needles (go me!) and next week will learn the intricacies of "make 1". I'm somewhat tempted to go out and buy more yarn, green this time, and get a second hat on the go, which will obviously be better than this first attempt.