Progress! Well, A Start

There you have it, kids! I cast-on for the HelloYarn/Spunky Eclectic handspun sweater explosion. And then.....I couldn't stop knitting. This stuff is so soft! I'm knitting this up on US3s. I used a provisional cast on so that I could easily knit those live stitches up with row 6 or so of the body, in order to get a nice tidy hem edge - hem edge done with Jamiesons. I switched to the handspun, which I am working in 1 x 1 rows - it's blending beautifully!

When I swatched for this I worked it in 2 x 2 rows of alternating colors, but it seemed a little bit too stripey for my liking - I would rather have VERY DISTINCT stripes than the semi-stripes these 2 together were giving me. It's a rather loose gauge, but it has a wonderful hand to it. I started some shaping decreases, which will go for a bit. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the top - crewneck, V-neck, etc. But I have plenty of time before I get there.

Meanwhile, I'll be teaching this week - Non-Adhesive Bookbinding. Anyone need a handbound blank book? I'll have about 8 teaching models by the end of the week. This teaching, of course, is cutting into my knitting time - I don't want to put this sweater down!

2000 Yards of Lace, 2 Podiatric Garments, A Quilt.

Well, it's been awhile hasn't it?

I've been continuing in my plan to semi-ignore my holiday crafting tasks. Well, sort of.
I managed to finally get around to machine-quilting this quilt-top that I have had kicking around for some time now - next, to put on the binding.It's been easier to work on non-thinking projects. I present to you my variation of the "Azure" socks from the Winter Knitty, made with STR "Cluckers" colorway:
These are on US0, toe-up, blah blah blah. Going pretty quickly.

But I've really been wanting to get another lace project on the needles, so I spent a pre-snowy evening winding up a bunch of lace:That's A Touch of Twist Lace Alpaca in Lavendar, Malabrigo Laceweight in Verdes, and HelloYarn lace in Acid Green.

And while picking up that ball winder, Max also presented me with the Marie Antoinette Honey Bee kits we ordered! We're planning on working these up as a KAL, but Max said sure get to it. So I'm going to do one, and then wait on the second one until Miss Max is ready to go.
So far, I've got the lace cuff done and grafted, and I picked up along the edge.
My notes on this so far: the pattern is EXTENSIVE. It has everything written down and charted, which is great, but mildly confusing (there's just so much there! in so many different formats!). I ran into a very quick brief confusion on the edge lace chart - Row 3 features a BO2, K1, P3.......it turns out that the K1 is the stitch that you loop the second BO over, then go right to the P3. Easily amended. I'm loving the loop pick up thing on this. The yarn is a dream to work with and the color is amazing. It's fun so far, and has a fair amount going on to keep me interested. Well, until I get to a big lace project.

What else is in store for me? More quilting perhaps - I may try and get another quilt done in time for the holidays, but I'm not counting on it. We'll see.

Oh! And cataloging my stash for Ravelry! Max and I plan on Knit-From-The-Stash in 2008 - anyone want to join us? We'll be posting our rules (right, Max?) once we get them solidified.

Viva La Rhinebeck!

Well, what can I say? It was all that and more. After a rainy journey out Friday afternoon, the weather (thankfully!) cleared up for the Rhinebeck Wooly festivities. I was a bit overwhelmed at the actual fair and ended up not taking many pictures while there - but everyone else did. Cruise around online if you need to see fair pics. Instead, I'd like to share this lovely view with you:

This was the most lovely setting - well, about 40 minutes north of Rhinebeck proper - and it truly is so beautiful and peaceful to take in. We stayed with my cousin, who has the fortune of waking up to this beauty every day. This section of the Hudson River Valley used to play a prominent role in the whale shipping industry, and the region is rich in history and folklore (the main bridge across the river up there is the Rip Van Winkle; it is said that the mountains form his sleeping profile). It's all just so lovely.

But you're really here for the fair, aren't you? Headed down first thing on Saturday with wool and cheese on the mind. This being my first year spinning, I had a new plan of attack . I was very focussed on finding fibers I have not tried spinning yet - after all, this was the ideal opportunity to get a little of this and a little of that. Oh, and in many cases, I could MEET the animals the fibers came from! I also had 2 other specific projects in mind* , and managed to leave with......well, a decent haul. As I was saying while there "I am here to get a year's worth of fiber" and then next year I can go back and do it all again.
I would love to tell you all about these things, but I took very very very bad notes. Here is a mini-inventory, and things that I am sure of: the orange-green-brown bundle at the very top was hand-delivered to me by Amy, the bright pink/red in front of that and to the left is a silk cap (very stringy/sticky), the red to the right of that is alpaca, the 3 in the middle are alpaca (as well as the lavendar), the yarn to the right is Socks that Rock (primarily because....what's the big deal? why does everyone love this? I need to see for myself if it is ALL THAT), and I can't remember what is on the bottom.














Don't these all look so soft and dreamy? There are some wool bundles in there - after all, the roving is the gift that keeps on giving. It's TWICE the entertainment for your buck! Not only do I get to spin it up, but then there is knitting as well. What a bahgain.

Aside from the softness of, well, EVERYTHING, I also managed to meet a gazillion people and make it over to blogger meetup. I'm not going to do links here, but it was great to talk to (I apologize for leaving anyone out!) Lyssa, Boogie, HelloYarn, YarnaGoGo (all the way from CA!), BrainyLady and Veronik, Jess and Casey, AnnieKnits, and about 56290385609 more great knitters. It was really interesting to see patterns that I recognize walk by, on a REAL person, as well as yarn. I was sporting my Branching Out scarf.........too hot for anything bulkier.

On Sunday we went to visit Reggie at Howard Hall Farms - he and Nora have been working on restoring this house the REAL way for a few years now, and the fun has just begun! Reggie gave us a tour of the place, and the chance to see what has been done so far, what needs to be done, and some history on the building while we nibbled on cider donuts. Here's an example of a lovely Japanese joint redistributing a lot of the load on the top floor, and a bit of the detail (and the thickness of the stone walls!) that they are working to preserve:














Along with checking out this amazing restoration, they kindly provided me with an entire FLEECE from one of their sheep! I'm debating how to go about the processing. So now my car smells like a barn.

Oh, and we got cheese OF COURSE.

I'll leave you all with this picture of Amy enjoying her new favorite color:
*more on this to come.

No-good, two-timin’ KAL pal

Hi Stacie! I have a confession to make:


Wing o’ the Moth isn’t back on the needles yet. While I probably don’t actually have to wait until I can get bifocals, I just haven’t been compelled to up and cast on for the third time. Not like I was compelled to knit some booties after seeing Adrian’s at the Lazy Redliners SnB. Compelled, I say.

Above is my first pair, quickly abandoned when I decided, in the dim light at 10pm, that they looked, well, not like clown vomit, precisely, but... Maybe baby-clown spit-up. None of the expecting parents on my list are quite hippie-ish enough for a pair of these. Although they’re looking better in this morning’s foggy light.


Here’s the first of a better pair. It’s Koigu KPPPM in a color I think of as Taos. I don’t know that the yarn will actually be heavy enough. It’s an experiment. One I’d like to stay home to complete and then write up. I’m making the larger size—let’s call them “beegbootee.”


My spoils from last night’s stash-be-gone include this 8oz hank of Hello Yarn superwash merino, whose slightly wonky spin caused Adrian to label it a dud. Not to me it’s not. Yum. Yum, yum, yum. Thank you, Adrian!

At this point, I still plan on taking Moth to the Cape with me next week, but Stacie: you should be ready to perform an intervention if I can’t talk about anything but beegbootees over the next few days.

Le chou en noir

Hi friends! My chou bottoms are coming right along, as you can see. I'm really having fun knitting them - it's like putting together one of the larger LEGO kits. You just follow the directions. Comfort knitting. And let me say: Cascade Fixation is great to work with. I've never used a cotton yarn my hands liked before this - and the elastic means it's nearly impossible to drop a stitch. There's nothing hard to manage as regards tension, either - just regular ol knittin.

Like Stacie, when I tried on the front of the hipster, I thought: whoops! Shouldn't have made the biggest size. But when I tried on the back last night, I was thankful I had, because, um: More to accommodate back there (surprise!).


I used Eunny's invisible cast-on instructions instead of the ones that come with the Chou pattern, and while her cast-on is easy to master and wicked fun to do (very swooping and rhythmic motions), it leaves these criss-crossed loops on the bottom set of stitches - pretty hard to purl together with the top set when you get there a few rows later. I think for the bra I'll have to try again to figure out the instructions as given, which unfortunately come with a hard-to-parse set of illustrations. (Stacie actually performed the work for me when "I" cast on for the front of the hipster. Now you know my shame...)


Breakfastcam update: Have I mentioned June Taylor to you before? Perhaps once or twice? I have been addicted to this brand of breakfast stuffs for over ten years and have never strayed far - all else is inferior to June's English-style California-made preserves. Heaven. As was the weather this morning! Cool, overcast, and humid. Yes: heaven. What New England has done to deserve a nice summer, I can't even guess at.


So now I leave you with a little yarn porn, some lovely lace and sock yarn from Adrian at Hello Yarn. Aren't these colors wonderful? I love brown and green together, and as you know, fashions change, so when my tastes are in vogue, I seize the moment. Even when I don't know what to do with, say, lace yarn. Maybe a Kat Coyle Lala scarf...


And this would make excellent Monkeys.

Let us now praise Wild & Woolly

See that wagon, way off there in the distance? It's the one I fell off of recently.

Yep, in October, I made a pledge to knit only from stash until Rhinebeck 2007. I realized pretty quickly that I'd be breaking my pledge when I go to Taos in May (La Lana! Can't wait...), and that I'd need to get some yarn to make Miles the Hello Yarn pirate mittens he's been hankering after, but otherwise my plan was to divert the money I'd been spending on stash to Cheri Huber's Africa Vulnerable Children project.

Well I'm still feeding the orphans, so don't hate me, but man, have I been buying yarn. Two weeks ago today I hit theknittinggarden.com and ordered a bag of the yummiest Jo Sharp Silkroad Ultra in a beautiful chocolate-brown ("tamarind"), as well as some Rowan Scottish Tweed aran in lovat (a nice medium teal) for Kim Hargreaves' Demi from Vintage Style. This was on Friday afternoon. On Wednesday morning I got a note from the Knitting Garden saying the yarns were out of stock, but they expected a shipment 'next week'. No asking if I still wanted the yarn, no apology for the delayed response, just making me read between the lines to guess I'd get the yarn about three weeks after ordering. If I was lucky.

Maybe not such a big deal except the yarns weren't marked as out of stock on the site, and it's the third time this has happened to me with that vendor. I'm nursing a suspicion that the vendor might be ordering from their suppliers after orders come in from the website. Not saying, just suspecting. When I emailed the owner to cancel the order, I asked her that question, and she didn't respond to it. She did say her server had been down, but still: if you're telling someone their yarn ain't available five days after sending them an invoice, don't you want to mention something like that? Along with an apology?

Anyway, this is not really about the Knitting Garden, but more about Wild & Woolly, because when I called them, they told me they had both the yarns, the colors, and the quantities I needed had a sick sick thing for, and would overnight them for a total of $7 shipping. That's seven measly dollars.

I mention this because Wild & Woolly seem to have a bad rep on the web. The woman I talked to couldn't have been more accommodating - and she didn't have any superfakeynice anything going on. Just authentically nice. So, huzzah, Wild & Woolly!

Btw, I wanted the yarn right away because I was leaving the next morning for San Francisco, and I didn't really have anything to take with me that wasn't already nearly done. Just in case you thought I was totally freaked-out fiber addict. Or something.

Because I'm still feeding the orphans.