Spring fever

Welcome to the view from my desk.  I thought it was time to shake things up around here with a WIP post... though instead of feeling inspired, I think all I feel is dismayed.  I have not one, not two, but four wintry hand coverings in various states of incompletion, with the first day of spring less than one month away.  There's the (no longer ambisexual) muvv, take two, about halfway done; its partner, about one third done; and two toddler mittens, complete except for the thumbs.  These have been laying in my workbasket in this precise state for *cough* weeks now, despite thinly veiled comments from my husband (the muvvs' intended recipient - "You know, spring may be around the corner, but those morning bike commutes are going to be pretty chilly for quite a while longer...") and signs of incipient frostbite on the kiddo's fingertips.  I don't know what's come over me.  Maybe it's spring fever, as I was loving winter until the recent warm snap, and now I'm feeling a bit hostile toward all things grey and cold.  Sorry woolies, it's nothing personal.  I promise.  Give me a few weeks to revel in thoughts of warmer weather, and then I'm sure I'll be wistful about fall in no time.

And the usual kind of stash...

Brace yourselves for knitterly content...  Above is all the new stash that has entered the house since Christmas.  I have a plan for about half of it.  Everything in balls came from thrifted and recycled sweaters.  The Eco Wool and the Malabrigo worsted were gifts from Laurie (mwah!) and the teal alpaca and Malabrigo sock were Christmas gifts from my folks.  It was definitely a high-fiber holiday.  My swift is going to be busy for a while. 

Laurie also got me one of the most clever books I've seen in a long time - Closet Monsters: Stitch Creatures You'll Love From Clothes You Don't.  I love homemade soft toys for kids, and this book of DIY stuffies is especially nifty because it teaches you how to turn disassembled garments into some pretty cool fabric friends that would appeal to children and grown-ups alike.  Yet another reason to get my sewing machine fixed (and another thing to look for at thrift stores - clothes to recycle into critters).  Oy.

What's making me happy now

For those of you waiting with bated breath to learn the fate of the muvv, I'll say it's coming along.  That's about all I'll say.  It's a mixed bag.  I've decided it will be mine (ahem) because with all the weird ambisexuality, it's not a great fit for my husband's hand.  It's not really a great fit for a human hand, come to that, but it works better on mine.  I'm working on the half-fingers now, which really aren't too tough, and I'm doing a fairly capable job of picking up the stitches along the fingers, something that made me quake with fear when I first read the pattern.  I'm also pretty proud that, aside from mixing up the stitch counts for the men's vs. women's size, it looks pretty decent for a first attempt at a hand covering-type thing.  Once I finish the fingers, I'll have to go back and pick up stitches to make the flap and then finish the thumb, and THEN start over on the ones that (hopefully) will actually be for my husband.  Progress has slowed a bit over the last few days because I'm horribly sick - another sinus infection.  I don't know whether it's funny-as-in-ha-ha or funny-as-in-kind-of-sad that as few posts as I've made over the past couple years, at least a couple of them have been made in the throes of a bad sinus thing.  I did break down, after fever and swollen lymph nodes hit, and go get an antibiotic.  I think it was partially due to denial, but also to the fact that I'm still nursing the kiddo and only want to take medication if it's absolutely necessary.  Apparently I didn't get started on it soon enough to prevent feeling even worse for a day or two, but hopefully things will be looking up soon.  Naturally, the kiddo has chosen now to pop her first year molars, so I've been up and down with her every 30 minutes or so for the last couple nights.

I always enjoy it when bloggers share what things are rocking their world at the moment, so since I've not had the mental energy the last couple of days to write anything for this space, I'll throw out a few of the things that are rocking my world these days.

I'm a huge fan of Björk, going back to when I was in high school and came across The Sugarcubes' newly-released record Life's Too Good.  My friends all thought I was nuts - nobody else seemed to like it much, but it remains one of my favorite albums to this day.  Every so often I dust it off and groove out all over again...  Screwball and totally uplifting.  Here are two of my favorite songs:

I'm a re-reader for sure, and I love visiting again and again with books that touched me somehow.  One of my favorite winter re-reads is Smilla's Sense of Snow, probably on my all-time top 10 fiction list.  On the surface a thriller, this book has metaphysical depths and passages of such astonishing beauty they leave me breathless.  I tend to think that it is in fact author Høeg, and not Smilla, who has the real sense of snow.  His descrptions of snow and ice in all their myriad forms are so vivid that I grow cold as I read.  Adding to the chill is the pervasive theme of alienation and the sobering colonial history of Greenland.  The plot itself takes a back seat to the storytelling.  Just beautiful, in a strange and lonely way.  I love to burrow deep underneath the blankets for this one.

Keeping up with the kind of chilly theme, there are the wintry tones in the breathtaking photographs of Hendrik Kerstens.  They remind me a lot of the gorgeous Xteriors series by Desiree Dolron, also a Dutch photographer.

    
Lotta Jansdotter designs the kind of stuff I go nuts for - clean, organic shapes that somehow have a bit of a vintage feel about them.  And apparently I'm a little slow, but I had no idea that IKEA sold fabric.  Really cool fabric.    

Some blogs I'm loving right now:  Crafting Japanese, a site about Japanese craft books.  I've always found the Japanese aesthetic sensibility to be fascinating.  This blog has patterns mostly for things only the "fantasy me" would wear, but that are a lot of fun to look at nonetheless.  Then there's The Zero Waste Home - probably not realistic, but highly motivational.  And then there's the sadly defunct Saartje Knits.  Thank goodness for archives.

Stay warm!

(Mis)Adventures of the Ambisexual Muvv

That's "muvv," as in something you wear on your hand that's part mitten and part glove.  As in what I'm trying to knit right now.  As in what I shouldn't be trying to knit while on active parenting duty.  That old saw "don't try this at home" exists for several good reasons, I'm sure, and one of them is undoubtedly to save you from blundering into a knitting disaster of this order of magnitude.  Picture this.  I'm knitting along, cranking out 4 inches of 1x1 rib for the cuff, no sweat, a few rounds of plain ol' knitting, and even the thumb gussetting was clicking along pretty fast.  Oh, wait, the kiddo has chased the cat under the coffee table and gotten stuck.  Be right back.  OK.  Crap.  Now the kiddo is attempting to parasail off the couch with a diaper.  Back in a jif.  Whew.  Disaster averted.  Exasperatingly clever kiddo then stages a near-decapitation and while I am rushing to her aid, dashes past me in the other direction and proceeds to try and rip my needles out of the ever-lovin' muvv.  No wonder, then, when I finally sit back down, heart rate returning to normal, that in a round or two I notice "hey, something doesn't look right here."  I realize that with all the distractions, I have been inadvertently switching back and forth between the instructions for the men's size and the women's size.  Cast on man's stitches, start thumb gusset according to woman's, do part of the thumb gusset in man's, part in woman's.  Hence "ambisexual."  I won't even tell you how many weird fudges I did over the next few rounds to get back to the right number of stitches so I can start the finger(less) part.  So basically at this point I'm just winging it, which really doesn't bother me so much with scarves or hats or something.  I probably didn't make any two of those flap hats exactly alike, but as long as it's big enough around, your hat is likely to be fine.  Most folks don't have pesky things like fingers sticking out of their heads that you have to take into account.  Hands, on the other hand...

I'm going to keep plugging away at it.  If it doesn't fit my husband, maybe it will fit me (assuming that it has minimally human proportions).  I figure that the practice of going through the motions and having to try and puzzle out a fix will be good practice for me, even if it doesn't help with the knitting backlog (or my sanity).

 

the thumb gusset that bats for both teams

I wonder if anyone has ever gotten a babysitter just so they can knit?  I'm kidding (mostly).

     

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time (and other Bertie Russell quotes)

Brace yourselves... it's an actual WIP update! These are the Fingerless Convertible Gloves from Patons Next Steps Seven, a long overdue present for my husband.

Usually I am not a big fan of these craft store pattern books, but the projects in this one are kind of nifty, and I got it at Jo-Ann with one of their 40% coupons, so it was practically free. And in the interest of symmetry, I am knitting these out of Patons yarn, too. The pattern calls for Kroy Socks, but I am actually making them with Classic Wool. Two things here. First, I have some bizarre quantum strangeness-type relationship to gauge wherein I get nothing even sort of approximate to what I'm supposed to get with the same weight yarn, same size needles, etc. I'm a relatively tight knitter, but even that isn't sufficient to account for what happens. I'm a freak of nature, what can I say? To wit, this pattern calls for using fingering weight yarn on size 2 needles. I'm getting gauge with worsted weight on size 3s. Go figure. Which brings me to the second point. I've bought Patons Classic Wool before - it's actually a pretty decent workhorse wool for basic projects: readily available, inexpensive and reasonably soft. But I hadn't bought any for a couple years, and when I snapped up several balls last November, I thought "hmmm... is it just me or is it thinner than it used to be?" I'm a big fan of dense knits and thick fabrics, and I seem to recall that this yarn made a suitably dense knit for me with a size 6 needle. But with the new Classic Wool, when I knit it up on a 6, the fabric seems way less substantial, hence using it in place of Kroy for these mitts. I'm baffled. I knit something like 5 or 6 swatches (which is really unheard of for me) and just sat there and scratched my head. The twist seems different, too. Anyway... onward and hopefully upward. Apologies for the distinctly unartistic photo - it's one of those days.

We're redecorating a bit around here and looking to buy a couple pieces of furniture, and as I've been shopping and fantasizing I've come to the realization that I have a crazy mixed-up style eye. Across the board, I love old things, from vintage to true antiques. I'm a big Frank Lloyd Wright nerd and I love just about all things Craftsman. So you wouldn't think I'd also be completely potty over Danish Modern, but I am. Things like this make me swoon a little. I also like Asian design elements - traditional Japanese houses make me go a bit giddy, too. But probably my dream home would be a Craftsman bungalow or four-square, filled with a mix of Craftsman antiques, Danish Modern pieces, and the odd Asian accent here and there. (Don't want much, do I?) Trying to cobble something like that together on a budget from thrift stores and secondhand furniture shops is challenging, sometimes fun, and almost always a little sad and frustrating. It's times like these that I try to bear in mind this sage quote from Bertrand Russell: "To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness." Think about that, I mean really think about it. It's a tough one, and I try every day to really feel it in my soul. (Bertie R. had a lot of pretty cool things to say, actually.)

I mentioned, in my last post, that I am prone to thrifting envy. This is somewhat of an understatement when I come across posts like this one, from the archives of one of my favorite blogs of all time. I don't even know if churches here have rummage sales. If they're something privy only to the congregation, I'd consider joining if only to get in the loop on some loot like that! Or maybe it's a Montana thing, in which case I think we should definitely consider relocation.

Also, I'm as delighted as I can be that one of the people I love most is roadtripping northward to hit the KY Sheep and Fiber fest with me in May! Seems a long way off, but I know it will be here in no time. Flat. At the rate I'm going, I might still be working on these mittens then.

Thrifted glory

As a knitter, it's a real bummer that I don't like to wear socks. I mean, I REALLY don't like to wear socks. One winter, I even got some delightfully archaic-sounding (but otherwise not very delightful) chilblains on my toes from going around in my clogs, sans socks, when it was... well, suffice it to say most normal people were wearing socks. At least one pair. Socks are a great way to add a dash of color and whimsy to your outfits, and I see many great examples of that - not to mention sock patterns that I would love to knit for myself, but I'd have to really be willing to wear them, wouldn't I? See the problem? Thought so.

One of the things I love to see in other people's blogs are posts about their thrift scores (even if it makes me insanely jealous since I currently live in a sort of thrifting dead zone), so I thought I'd share a few of the gems that I've found. None of these are recent scores, but I saw them on my bookshelf yesterday and was reminded of the utter joy and amazement that I had when I found them.

First, How to Know the Wildflowers by Mrs. William Starr Dana. This is one of those great Dover reprints (my love for which I should save for a separate post), and I grabbed it at Goodwill for a quarter. It's full of information about scores and scores of common wildflowers, and in its day (late 19th century) was one of the most popular wildflower identification guides. Reasons for its populist appeal are evident - no burdensome taxonomy (flowers are organized by color), and in addition to all the expected pertinent information (description, habitat), there is a delightful and fascinating wealth of historical, poetic, and mythological references to each plant. Was it known to the ancient Babylonians? Is it mentioned in The Faerie Queene? Did William the Conqueror think it smelled good? All this would be joy enough, but my copy is blessed with extensive and meticulous glosses by a previous owner. These describe which of the flowers are to be found in the KY Bluegrass, when and where they are to be found (as detailed as specific fields in specific counties), and other folk wisdom peculiar to the region. And then there are the real gems. Normally, I don't like to have books that have been written in, but when the writing in question is like this, I want to sing, laugh, and share a righteous fist bump with the anonymous author.






The second book I'll share today is Simple Living by Jacques Massacrier (1973), thrifted for fifty cents. I have a passionate love for books like this - independently published guides to the granola life, back-to-the-land style, from the early 70s. I love the oovy-grooviness, the DIY aesthetic, the fact that most of them eschew traditional typesetting for the "handwritten" look. The illustrations are always amazing and I love the tone - joyful, optimistic, positive. Some would say naive, but I still love the conviction in these kinds of books that there is a better life to be had through a simpler and more grounded way of living.


This book has hundreds of little mini-tutorials on virtually every aspect of homesteading and self-sufficient living, from building to beekeeping to butchering to needlecraft. Unfortunately, they are so skimpy on detail that you'd have to already be fairly well-versed in whatever skill is being discussed to actually get anything out of it, but that's a minor quibble. The art is simply divine. Here's a page from the section on knitting, with an interesting take on sweater construction (sorry about the shading and distortion at the gutter edge - the binding is kind of fragile and I didn't want to smash it too flat while I was scanning and risk breaking the spine):


Nasturtiums, one of my favorite flowers, from the section on botanical healing:


A couple images near and dear to my doula heart:



And this, as likely a portrait as you'll ever find of me and R as we head out to the Farmer's Market:

See Rain City

I'm delighted that people dig my knitting enough to clamor for more, but the orders keep pouring in and of course I feel obligated to do those before I start on anything for myself... especially since some of the orders are for hats and other wintry wear, and I guess I need to get those done while there's still enough cold weather ahead for them to be useful.

Last night, I was reading a book with the kiddo, and there was a picture of people flying kites. She pointed to one of the wooden sticks with kite twine wrapped around it and then pointed to my yarn and ball winder. It was a proud moment for a knitting mama, my child making a connection with yarn. She also occasionally brings me the Knit Picks catalog and wants to read it like her other story books. It's interesting that she seems to like green yarns the best.

Here are a couple of pictures of my Mom's Xmas Saroyan during blocking... I'll try and post a picture of it in its finished glory when I have a chance to sort through all the holiday snaps we dumped onto the hard drive.

I love how beautiful those leaves are, and they were a lot of fun to make. I'd like to do a whole shawl of just those.

Also a scene from this afternoon, ripping and winding a thrifted sweater. Delicious 100% shetland wool in a dark olive marl. My hand-turned nostepinne. And Ms. Sticky Fingers.



Tonight, for some reason, I feel very lonely for Seattle. We lived there for three years, from 1999-2002, and those were very good years. They were tough, too - I was at the very beginning of my journey through chronic illness and was housebound and homesick for quite a while when we first moved there, but life went on and we nonetheless carved out a little world for ourselves in that Northwest land of milk and honey and rain. I have to say that I loved the weather - the muted blues of the slate sky and steel water and the technicolor greenness of everything else. I loved the rain dripping off the "nooky pen" trees (as I called them), the Washington Park Arboretum and the Japanese Garden, hiking in Ravenna Park (which was just at the end of the street where we lived), biking to work on the BG Trail, riding the bus to work in Queen Anne (just in the shadow of the Space Needle) and grabbing dinner, discovering my favorite novel of all time at Cafe Allegro, eating salmon teriyaki while watching the world go by, losing an hour or three, old school fish and chips at Ivar's while waiting for the ferry to Bainbridge Island, a steamy treat on a chilly day (back in their "eastern European cafe" days). I loved the incredible thrift stores. I love that we spent New Year's Eve Y2K on top of the Great Mound at Gas Works Park with a few thousand other crazy hippie types. I loved the fact that you could see snow capped mountains on the horizon every day of the year, loved the days when Mt. Rainier was "out," rising like a mirage out of apparently thin air. I loved that you were surrounded by water and boats and bridges and that the air always smelled fresh, like rain and the sea. I loved the green lifestyle, the progressive attitude of the city, a huge city, but one that felt suprisingly small and cozy. And by the time we left, it had really started to feel like home. I remember grabbing dinner to go on the day we started packing up to move, and I cried all the way home. It had finally hit me, not so much that we were leaving, but rather that, despite how hard it had been at times, I really wanted to stay. I have fantasies that someday we will move back there, or at least back to somewhere in the Pacific northwest, which is by far the most beautiful part of the country I've seen.

Now, off to have a little "I miss Seattle" cry.

In sickness and in... well, lots of sickness here

My knitting goal for this year (besides getting my Xmas knitting going early and in some kind of premeditated fashion) is to make myself a sweater. The fact that I've never done anything even remotely like a sweater doesn't really faze me. I'm not one of those people who looks at something like a sweater and thinks "oh, how hard can it be, really?" Nope. I realize that it probably is indeed quite fiddly in places, but my thing is that I really don't see why that should get in the way of me making one anyhow. Usually, this works out OK, and, as the Yarn Harlot likes to say (and I'm paraphrasing here) "it's just knitting, nobody is going to die." Well. Let's just hope I'm not the first knitting-audacity fatality. Now to decide on a pattern... I've been spending most of my free time lately hanging out on Ravelry and rubbernecking at all the gorgeous sweaters. I'm more of a cardigan person, and I like round yoke designs and cables and probably about a million other things that are all wrong in a first sweater, but there you go. No harm in looking.

My other obsession now is recycling yarn from thrift store sweaters. Oh boy, yes. I actually love the process of taking the garment apart, ripping it out, and winding the yarn back up. There's something about winding yarn into balls that I find very relaxing (though slightly less so in the presence of a toddler and a cat). Getting a sweater's-quantity of really nice yarn for $2.50 ain't bad, either.

Outside, it's winter with a vengeance. Bitter cold, and the ground has been white for most of the time since Christmas. Inside, it's like sick bay. We can't kick these colds, and an intestinal thing ripped through here a few days ago, resulting in one pretty sick kiddo and parents in various stages of incapacitation. Winding yarn and wiping noses, yep, that's the order of the day. And lots of laundry.

Hey, stranger

So... when last I posted (back in JULY, ouch), I had just lost my hard drive, and right on the heels of that, my power supply. These events, unbeknownst to me at the time, would mark the beginning of a long separation between me and my computer - and all things and activities that I had previously associated with my computer, like blogging. As my previous posting frequency will illustrate, however, such drastic occurrences were hardly necessary to throw me off my blogger's groove, but they pretty much guaranteed it would be a while before I got back here in the driver's seat. I've been snagging email and random internet time on our laptop in the months since, but it's not the same for me as being able to sit down here at my desktop and really get comfy and compose. But Santa got me back up and running, so here I sit trying to figure out where to start. I have to say that the computer disaster (one of several in a line of similar losses over the past year or so) has been yet another thing that, despite the short-term pain, has actually been good for me because it has forced me to get out of habitual patterns and to see where those patterns were holding me back. I've seen where I have been wasting too much time or spending too much energy involved with things that don't really matter so much. I've learned a lot of lessons about how to move my life towards greater simplicity and purpose, and I don't know when or if I would have learned those lessons had I not had the opportunity foisted on me by circumstance. I hope that this will also teach me to view adversity a bit differently... to find the unlooked-for lesson in those inevitable downers.

But enough of the serious for now - yes, there's been adversity and growth and lots and lots of mamahood (both joyous and trying), but there's also been quite a bit of knitting, and that's been pretty upbeat. In the run-up to Christmas, I knitted 7 toddler flap hats, including, finally, one for my own kiddo. I also knitted a newborn hat for some friends' new arrival, and made my mother a Saroyan for Xmas. Remember this Malabrigo? That became Mom's Saroyan, a worthy use for it finally found. It was a nail-biter up to the end, since I had to make the entire scarf (or "scarf-ette" as it were) out of the one hank, so imagine me weighing, measuring, and sweating the whole way. It turned out beautifully, though, and I will be adding a digital kitchen scale to my look-for list as I go thrifting. My analog scale just doesn't quite cut it for weighing yarn. The toddler hats were all well received, and I was extra-pleased because this is essentially my own pattern, which started out as a heavily modded version of the Hudson, and kind of went from there. I made a pact with myself to be much more organized with Xmas knitting for next year, and - most importantly - to get started before (ahem) Thanksgiving. Right now, I'm working on a balaclava and convertible mittens for my husband, which really should have been a Xmas gift (see previous statement). After that, I have a couple more projects that I have to get out for other people, and then, I plan to finally knuckle down to a couple projects for myself.

Photos to come... (did I mention I lost Photoshop in the conflagration?)

Gearing back up

In many ways, I'm not what you'd call a particularly adventurous person. I have no burning desire to go hang gliding, base jumping, or to get a bunch of tattoos and swallow swords. I do, however, have an adventurous streak when it comes to eating; I will try almost anything once (as was proven on our trip to China). And, apparently, this wild streak of abandon also extends to knitting. With next-to-no experience, I'm making plans for lace, dyeing (more on that later) and yes, spinning. I'm convinced I can teach myself how to do all of this.

Now, there's been a bit of an illness-induced knitting drought around here for the last week or so, but I broke it this evening by casting on for, yes, another baby hat. Once I get this one done I will be caught up for the time being on things owed and might celebrate by taking a wild girlish fling at something for myself. The adventuresome part, though? This is my first project in fingering yarn, which is also my first project in self-striping yarn and the smallest needles I've used to date (2.5 mm, size 3 for you US-sies). The going has been a bit fiddly to start, but I'm quickly getting up to speed. So far, so good. The WIP name for this little hat is "Blueberry Pie," because that's just what the yarn reminds me of (also reminds me of a fairly hideous painting I did in art school, but I won't dwell on that here). I'm really curious how the color is going to work out on this. Variegated yarns fascinate me - how they're dyed, how they knit up... The math involved in creating the repeats really appeals to my geeky side. I find myself getting very interested in learning to do some dyeing of my own.

Knitting's not the only thing that's coming back to life around here... I didn't do this myself, but I can brag on my husband for making incredible tomato egg soup the other night. This is Chinese home cooking comfort food; my sister-in-law taught us how to make it recently. He also churned out some wicked righteous oatmeal chocolate chip cookies made from organic oats. It's nice to have the house humming again with the little buzz of stuff being made. Oh yeah, and I have a bathtub full of beer, also hubby's project. It's supposed to be "resting" in the bottles for a while, but ssssssh - we sampled some. A nice, bitter little ale. More to come on that.

I'll post a picture of the hat when there's a little more to see. No pics of the food - we ate it all (sorry).

Wedding bell blues

Yeah. A bit big for my britches, obviously, thinking I was going to get a shawl knitted for a wedding which was less than a week away - a week in which I spent two whole days in a frenzy of packing and organizing and washing up, one solid day on the road, and two more days careening hither and yon to various pre-wedding festivities, dragging a nearly-four-month-old along all the while. I would offer to share what I was smoking, but it's illegal in 37 states. I did try and cast on for the Simple Yet Effective Shawl, but there was another problem, too. The flippin' yarn. Noro Silk Garden Sock. Drop-dead gorgeous in the skein, meltdown-inducing and angst-making on the needles. Now, I will be the first to admit that, as a knitting knoob, my lack of skills might have played a significant factor, but this.yarn.does.not.give. Any. It's like concrete string. No stretch whatsoever. Add to that the fact that I was having a tough time seeing the stitches because of all the little fiddly (yet lovely, mind) color variations and intermittent fuzzy bits. I tried, swore, frogged, tried again, swore, frogged... After a few repeats of this, I decided I needed a less stressful project for the countdown to my first 14 hour drive with an infant, and picked the hat up again. Noro - I'll deal with you later. Maybe much later. For now, just sit there and look pretty. Good yarn.

Meanwhile, I got to work on the decreases for the kiddie hat, which required switching to the DPNs. This was the first time I'd worked with DPNs, and while it was very interesting and made me feel very swanky, it was also a bit like wrestling with a porcupine in heat. The transition-y bits from needle to needle were a bit gappy, but nothing too bad since I'm generally a pretty tight knitter. I whizzed through the decrease rows and had started banging out the i-cord topknot (which I REALLY enjoy doing for some reason) when I noticed a little, shall we say hole?, near the top of the hat. Long story short, I had dropped a stitch, not noticed, and - due to the nature of the decrease rows - created a situation which was not a simple matter to fix. I'll spare you specifics, but imagine, if you will, the colorful language as I rip back this baby hat for the nth freakin' time, put 96 stitches back on the DPNs, then go around untwisting the stitches one by one... By this point, I was developing serious baby hat fatigue as well as a bad cold, so I bailed.

I haven't knitted since then - 4 days ago. 4 days of fevers, nose blowing (mine and my daughter's), endless-seeming 900 mile road trips, motels, truck stops, too much crappy food, snowstorms, herbal tea, fly-by-night backseat diaper changes, need-a-nap desperation... Arrive home to find that, in my absence, the Knit Picks Options needles that I ordered had come, triggering a bad attack (exacerbated, no doubt, by all the phlegm-induced dizziness) of startitis. This is not so good, considering that I still have to finish that dang.baby.hat so I can gift it before the weather turns...

I'll close for now with a shot of me, my daughter (who loves to watch me knit), and the baby hat in happier times...

Yarn Paralysis, Take Two (and call me in the morning)

Well, my darling friend Jennifer (one of my favorite people) just had me as a sort of "guest blogger," and in the event that some of her adoring public wander over this way, I suppose I shall have to get on the ball and give you something to read. For anyone waiting with bated breath for the continuation of the yarn shop saga, I publish here Parte the Seconde, as told to the Shameless Knitting Nerd:

I was back there today - again - braving my icy driveway and giving the stiff arm to my little nursling... I had an "oh crap" moment when I walked in and the same clerk that was there yesterday (and witnessed my bizarre behavior) was working again this afternoon, but I threw caution to the wind and headed to the back where they keep the sock yarn. In a way, this was good, as it allowed me a modicum of privacy in which to sweat and agonize, but it also made me feel furtive, as though my yarn paralysis needed to be hidden from public view to spare, no doubt, children and the otherwise impressionable or easily alarmed. After lying awake half the night, I had my plan of attack in mind... I was going to return the three skeins of Kureyon and come away with either some Silk Garden Sock (price be damned) or some Lornas Laces, enough in either to make one of those Baktus scarf thingies I keep seeing on Ravelry (a way for poor slobs like me to make something nice out of a pathetically small amount of really nice yarn). So I grab a skein of Silk Garden Sock in color 84 (that was easy!), while simultaneously resisting the urges to swoon and to get sidetracked bythe Zitron. I was a model of self-discipline (forged in those long hours of tai chi), and I was headed for the register in record time when it reached out and grabbed me. "It" being the Malabrigo sock. It was hanging there on the end cap, lying in wait, no doubt, for the tragicaly weak to blunder by. Apparently, yarn can smell the yarn paralysis on you - it marks you as one that can be culled from the herd. Because I had just bought some Malabrigo worsted, I had made up my mind that I wasn't going to even consider the Malabrigo sock, the better to experience some other fantastic yarns. Apparently, the Malabrigo gods were offended by this and threw a hank of sockweight Rayon Vert in my path. If you haven't seen this colorway in person, I feel for you. It is a stunning, truly life-changing mix of radiant deep purples cut with a hint of olive and dirty mauve... so I had to grab it I did. Really. And as I hesitated, the Lorna's Laces (in the breathtaking Baltic Sea colorway), took advantage of my indecisiveness and leapt into my hand. So there I stood, then, with the Noro, Lorna's Laces and Malabrigo, thinking there was no way I was going to leave with it all (right?)... and thus the sweating began. I cleared a space on a shelf and laid them out side by side, as though that was going to do anything except convince me I had to have them all. How does one even begin to compare the various merits of gorgeous yarn? It's like trying to say which one of your kids you like best. The Lorna's Laces happened to be a perfect match for the pants and coat I was wearing at the time, so score one for the Shepherd Sock. But the Malabrigo was so - luminous. (Score tied.) And the Noro? - automatic point for sheer gorgeousness. As I was standing there, and making occasional trips back and forth between the counter and the window (in the vain hope that seeing the yarn in natural light would render any debate moot and put an end to the agony), I started to feel self-counscious. Did the clerk think I was getting sticky fingers? I probably seemed suspicious - twitching, sweating, gnawing on a fingernail or two... I put the Noro back (poorest cost/yard ratio, let's be rational), then the Malabrigo (I already have some, right?), leaving the lovely Lorna's Laces. Whew. OK. But then the light struck the Malabrigo just so, and I snatched it up again. (Dang.) After nearly 30 minutes (yes, I'll admit to that) of putting one back and then another, all the while pacing little circles on the floor and trying not to look like a shoe bomber, I cave and - in the interest of getting out of the yarn shop before my daughter either graduates from college or expires from starvation -decide that I can take 2 out of 3. Somehow, this doesn't help. Another period of time passes (which may or may not have been close to 25 minutes) and finally I was on my way out the door with the Noro and Malabrigo stowed in my canvas bag. The minute my butt hit the car seat, I was gripped by doubt and the plaintive wail of the abandoned Shepherd Sock tore at my yarn-weary heart, but I made myself a stone and drove on. If I was a betting gal, though, I'd lay good yarn money I'll beback there for the Lorna's Laces eventually... The clerk, who seemed surprisingly unalarmed by my odd behavior (leading me to believe yarn paralysis is a much more serious problem than I had initially supposed), was sure to tell me I had 90 days to exchange.

So that brings me to this:



...my current baby hat, the one I frogged and have now started over, but which I feel is about to get bumped so that I can turn that Silk Garden Sock into a Baktus in time for my sister-in-law's wedding next week. Let the insanity begin.

The blog wants what the blog wants

Organic is good. I don't just mean it in the sense of growing things without the use of chemical pesticides or fertilizers, I mean it in the sense of development as well. Of sitting back and watching things take their natural course. This blog, for example. Left to its own devices, it apparently wants to "try on" being a knitting blog. This trend may be slightly influenced by the fact that, apart from caring nearly round the clock for a baby that didn't get the memo about three month olds sleeping fifteen hours a day, I have been doing nothing much besides knitting. No greening, no gardening (though the fact that it's February kind of lets me off the hook for that one), no homesteading... I haven't even cooked anything since Christmas. Suffice it to say that if it weren't for knitterly content, there would be no content at all. But one thing occurs to me as I ponder this, and it's that I really, really enjoy writing about my knitting. I kind of feel like a pompous arse sometimes when I write those deep(ish) philosophical posts and like a bit of a preachy bore when I go on about being green. Not that it isn't important or a huge part of my life, and not that I don't want to write about it, it's just that, well, you already know you should do that kind of stuff. If you don't live under a rock, you've undoubtedly gotten the message about recycling and all that jazz. It's been done. Of course, so has the knitting blog, but most of the people who blog about crafting are actually experienced and pretty good at what they do. Me? I'm pretty much a noob knitter. Just last night, I nearly had a ssk-induced nervous breakdown that resulted in me frogging the very first hat I've tried to knit on circulars. Now where else can you get that kind of excitement? Glorious FOs fit for the magazines? You won't find that here. Wise knitterly advice? Keep moving, there's nothing here for you to see. But if you want a ring-side seat to the birth of a knitter, that I can deliver. In spades. Watch this space.

Ceci n'est pas un toboggan

The husband hat is done. Finally! This was a super-simple pattern and seemed like the kind of thing you could finish in a weekend, but apparently it takes a lot longer to knit in mommy years. One thing is for sure - I really don't like weaving in ends. Makes me nuts. Just so you know. (But one of these days I will get better with construction and finishing. Yep.)

And another thing to aspire to - that every project will not lead to moments (as nice as they may be in retrospect) of high, er, comedy. Recall the wonky sprout hat? This time, it was the cuff. The darn cuff. The pattern (which is called "Smart Hat" - I seem to have knitted the "stupid" version) tells you to knit for 25 cm before beginning the decreases. Now, despite the fact that I live in the "we're having none of your metric crap" US, I still know what side of the measuring tape to use, so I was a bit nonplussed when hubby tried on his hat and - well - let's just say he looked a bit like Dumb Donald from the Cosby Kids. When you folded up the cuff, it was freakishly long. It covered nearly the whole hat. I've considered the possibility that my husband has an unusually shallow head (in dimension only - I know, blame the victim), but I still think the sizing may be a bit off. Suffice it to say that if I knit this again in the future, I might start decreasing after, oh, say 18 or 20 of those little cms. We did have a good laugh, though, and he loves it, which is really all that matters. And I finished not a moment too soon - our recent balmier stretch gave way again overnight to freezing cold and snow, so off he went to work today in his new chapeau. Did I feel proud? Maybe a little.

What to get into next?

Two words...

...yarn porn.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmalabrigo in the Stonechat colorway, stashed. More to come!

Thanks, Laurie!!! xo

Tink back the knit

About a million years ago (well, actually only 14, when I first learned to knit), I promised my husband something. At the time, it was a scarf, though in retrospect I think not so much because he had a burning desire for one, but rather because as a novice knitter I was clinging helplessly to all things comfortingly rectilinear. I'm still basically a novice knitter, but age and the intervening years have brought a sort of mellowness that has made me a little more ripe for a challenge (though you will notice that I am still knitting hats in the flat and seaming them up - don't rush me). I've banged out two sprout hats in fairly short order, and when I started discussing plans for a third, and for all these other projects (none of which were the long-awaited scarf), he rather petulantly reminded me that I've yet to make good on that promise. So, flush with my recent hat-ty success, I decided to bump up to an adult size, lose the whimsical stem, and knit my deserving dude a warm, wooly watch cap. (Laurie, if you're reading, this is what might be known in some circles as a toboggan.)

It's a simple k4 p4 rib from cuff to crown, and I got off to a blazing start. Then, one night, I was trying to knit my way through a particularly deafening round of baby meltdown when I noticed it. A few rows back, I knitted a few stitches I should have purled. This is entirely understandable, given that I had a three month-old roaring at aircraft decibels in my ear, but it's really noticeable. Hubby, who lobbied hard for me to overlook the wonkiness of sprout hat #2, again argued for embracing the imperfection and keeping on with the truckin.' He even reminded me of a story I once told him about Persian rugmakers who deliberately sneak a mistake into each piece so as not to be cranking out woven affronts to Allah, who supposedly has cornered the market on perfection. Now that's a beautiful story, and far be it from me to pooh-pooh Persian rugmakers or my mate's well-intentioned cheerleading (and it is his hat, after all), but those few stitches are like an obnoxious wooly interloper giving me the fish eye evey time I see them. And I think that even if I do fix those stitches, my hat will be far enough from perfect to safely avoid being some sort of cosmic insult. So, ignoring cooler heads, I have been tinking the doggone thing back, stitch after godforsaken stitch.

(Visible in this picture is the stem of the glass that holds my gin and tonic, pretty much required for this leg of the project. And for those of you who know I'm nursing and fear for the welfare of my child, I go to La Leche League meetings. I'm way up on the whole breastfeeding thing and a little booze is OK. My daughter will not end up in Betty Ford and it just might keep me from hurting myself or someone else.) Now why, you might ask, don't I pop it off the needles, rip it back, put it back on the needles, and go on my merry way? Well, I have tried taking things off the needles before and had it work, but at the time I was only working with 30 or fewer stitches (remember those cute little sprout hats?). Right now, I'm looking at over 120 - the very thought of trying to put all those back on a needle makes me go more than a little clammy, hence the tinking. I'm trying to think of it as a Zen-like exercise - don't think, just tink. (Hey, whatever gets me through.)

Was WIP, now *whoops*

Pride goeth before a fall, it's said, and probably because someone knitted a hat which turned out well and decided to knit another in a size larger than the pattern allowed for. No problem, thought the overconfident knitter, I'll wing it. I will simply cast on more stitches and improvise the decrease rows thus... And right up until the seaming began, the overconfident knitter thought she had scored another triumph - another near-perfect (not quite as) little sprout hat for her nephew. But wait - what's going on here at the top? It's a little... wonky. By that I mean uneven. As in the top left side is a little higher than the top right side and there's this little bulge on one side of the stem...

Husband (trying to be helpful): Hats don't have sides. They're round.
Overconfident knitter (whining): But it looks weird!
Husband: It's hardly noticeable.
Overconfident knitter: No it's not! That bulge is as big as a bus!
Husband: Well, I'm sure it will disappear once sombody actually puts it on. It will stretch out.
Overconfident knitter (in no mood to be mollified): It has to be in the decreases! The deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeecreases! *eye twitches*

After much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth, during which several options were considered (ripping it out and starting over, hiding it in a drawer, donating it to Gooodwill, gifting it to someone with an uneven head), the no-longer-overconfident knitter thinks she has decided to go ahead and send it to her nephew. It's really not that bad, and he's so adorable that people will likely be so distracted by his cuteness they won't notice his lopsided, ill-advised hat. And, most important of all - he lives in San Diego, so who wears wool hats there, anyway?

Next time, humility (and a pattern).

All sewn up (almost)

Here's the hat... Finished except for sewing up the back seam, which is scaring me a bit. I'm pretty pleased with it so far and don't want the darn seam to be the thing that makes me not be pleased with it. My improvisation of the i-cord topknot worked out well - I like it much better than I think I would have liked the plain crown. I might work another couple of projects in the flat before trying to master the dpns and circulars, but barring any seaming tragedies, the kiddo should be able to sport this for Xmas. Yipperoo. (For what it's worth, the actual shade of green is much darker and mossier in person - my camera isn't capturing the color well.)

Knitting is making me a bad mother (and other yarns)

the hat in progress

I am pretty granola in the parenting department - in my house we breastfeed, babywear, cosleep, and are committed to the attachment parenting philosophy. So imagine my horror when, last night, I found myself seriously considering asking my husband to give our daughter a bottle of expressed milk so that I couldkeepknitting. Normally, I hate giving my child a bottle - I prefer to nurse her, unless I'm taking a much-needed nap-cation or trapped under something heavy. Bottles are for extenuating circumstances. But there I sat, furiously working on the hat and making good progress, when darling kiddo decides it's time for a nurse-a-thon. Two hours later, she's still latched on and I am about to break into a sweat as I sit there and stare at the hat. I'm so puffed up by my success thus far (many dropped stitches successfully rescued, two whole rows ripped back without so much as twisting a stitch) that I feel half-crazed at the thought of having to take a break. So what do I do while sitting there, maddeningly idle? I formulate an insane plan (which almost surely exceeds my current skill set) to substitute the plain-crown finish in the pattern I'm using for one with a cute little topknot that looks something like a stem on a gourd. I tend to agree with the people (and there are apparently a lot of them, at least in the design world) who think that baby headgear is substantially improved by the addition of ears, tassels, little elfin tendrils, and the like. I'm modifying the pattern as we speak, so stay tuned and wish me luck. I really don't need a WIP disaster with Xmas at t-minus four days and counting, especially if I'm going to keep the bottles at bay.

All I want for Christmas...

...is to be able to knit while nursing. (Or would that be "knursing?") I have learned to do many things one-handed since my daughter was born (including typing this blog entry), but sadly I don't see knitting being added to that list. Shame, since I really want to get something finished for her by Xmas. To that end, I've put the WIP cardigan aside for now and started a hat, for which I ended up buying more yarn (and two new needles!) despite a) it being almost Xmas, and b) the fact that I promised myself I'd try and work from my stash for a while. And when I say "stash," what I really mean is (only) two moderately-sized boxes full, and much of that was just given to me years ago by a knitting friend who bought it for a project and wound up hating it - I didn't actually buy it (so that makes it better). Still, I should really try and restrain myself. But I was in the craft store buying a present for someone else, and there it was - some lovely green wool that would be just perfect for the kiddo's hat... and I caved. It's on the needles as I speak. I'm really not happy with the way my cast-on edge looks (sloppy) and have been considering starting over, but I keep telling myself that this is a roll-edge hat, so the slop will be hidden, and if I keep madly frogging (the cardigan is practically croaking), then no finished work by Xmas. Oh dear.