Clickety-Clack Ewe

Kashmir

2008-05-21T14:22:00.008-04:00

I thought I looked at my knitting. I really did.

That is, until I had knit about 100 rows and then discovered a mistake at about row 50. The mistake was the ommission of two rows when I went from the top of the chart to the bottom again. It looked fine.... not as fine as the original pattern, but even folks that knit Kashmir would have been hard-pressed to see it unless it was pointed out. I took my friend Carolyn's advice (She who also knit Kashmir) to keep on knitting.

So I happily knit another 22 rows on Sunday.

And then...

I spotted it. A Big-O, Obvious can't-ignore-it error at about row 70. I was missing another entire row, which made the design kind of bleed together. Ugh. Ick. Flock!!!

I sighed. I took a picture. (photo above is an earlier one at the 100 row point. The 122 row one is still in my camera.)

And then I began to frog.... and frog... and frog....

When the fist 52 rows were ripped down to the Big-O mistake, frogging another 20 rows didn't seem all that drastic. This wholesale frogging is kind of like spotting a dreamy pair of shoes in some glossy fashion mag that costs the equivalent of a mortgage payment - makes that pair that costs a whole car payment look downright reasonable (for about 3 seconds).

I'm 25 rows to the good now, and I'm watching like a hawk. Believe me!!

Seduced

2008-05-16T08:57:00.002-04:00

I've been completely seduced by Ravelry all these months. It is a spectacle with it's kaleidoscope of inspiration and breadth of discovery, a World's Fair of fiber and wonder. It is the exhibition halls, the midway, the barkers, the cotton candy, the tilt-a-whirl, the tractor pull and the prize livestock all rolled into a click of the mouse. I've made magnificent friends, been wowed a thousand times, organized my stash, and broadened my horizons.

It's time to come back now, just to keep my own journal. In truth, I tried to come back before, but I couldn't remember sign-up e-mail, passwords, etc., and blogger does not make it too easy for prodigals to get back in the swim of things. I have lots to update.

Watch the Birdie!

2007-09-25T18:17:00.000-04:00

DH and I got back from vacation on Mackinac Island today. We brought back a DVD of wild birds (natural sound and music, too). Oliver and Garbo are positively enthralled. When a bird flies off the screen, they look in the back of the set to see if it went behind there. When the video ran out this afternoon, Oliver cried until DH started it again.

More on Michigan yarn shops later....

Two more hands, please!

2007-07-31T09:18:00.001-04:00

I just landed a new job helping a wonderful friend of mine run for Governor for the state of Indiana. I've been busy getting her office set up and attending meetings. With her background and experince, she will be perfect for the job. The work is exciting and fun - but it hasn't left me much time for knitting!

I'm still plugging along with my MS3 stoles. The white one is ready for Friday's clue, but I'm behind on the gray one and probably won't catch up before the next clue is out. Knitting the ground of flowers has been fun, hasn't it? I'm really curious why we'll need the lifeline.

I'm also excited to see what the theme will be. My back-up guess is that the theme has to do with the plight of the honey bee. Honey, I'm stuck on that bee thing! Bees have been in the news lately (read it in black and white) because of the mysterious epidemic killing so many.

With so much traveling, I needed a really, truly mindless project to knit in places where knitting lace can be dangerous (like conversing with your boss in a moving car, for instance). Using this bundle of yarn from the Fleece Artist, I'm working on the "Lady of the Lake" sweater. I got the yarn and pattern from an eBay store called Tidal Brook Yarns. Kathleen is an excellent merchant, with prompt shipping and helpful service. I recommend her highly to my knitting friends.

Yep, I should be knitting the Koigu sweater sleeves, but I'm still figuring and planning as I go (not mindless enough). Even though Koigu can be frogged a lot without visible damage, I want thesleeves perfect this time so Jazz will have to wait until I get an MS3 finished.

In Sheep's Clothing

2007-07-18T10:15:00.000-04:00

I just went for a second cup of coffee!

(Garbo, asleep in the alpaca fleece I was spinning.)

The buzz

2007-07-14T23:24:00.000-04:00

MS3 is buzzing around my brain. I now think the motif in the point is a likely a bee. It fits even better with my original guess of the Goddess Neith, the weaver, the wearer of the veil, deity of the sky (light and dark). The Temple of Neith in Sau (Sais), Egypt, is known as the House of the Bee.

"The Veil of Neith" sounds like a good shawl name, too.

Or a thousand other guesses.
It probably really is a NASCAR checkered-flag theme. Ha!

Sheep shot

2007-07-13T10:52:00.001-04:00

My wonderful nephews are in town, which means little knitting or spinning. More like NO knitting or spinning. But fiber? Can't keep me away from fiber! We went to a petting zoo yesterday, and I got to at least feed a coupla sheep and a llama or two.

I love my nephews. (But I'm missing MS3)!

My, aren't we lazy!

2007-07-11T10:49:00.000-04:00

No stretching, no blocking, no nothing.... My 7-1/2 year old twin nephews are here to visit for a week, so there's little time to knit. I banged out the last six rows of Clue 2 on the white version of MS3 this morning while they slept. I hear them stirring now, so a quick shot before I start a very, very, VERY fun-filled day...

Nothin' but knit

2007-07-08T10:23:00.000-04:00

Yaaaaaay! DH is out of the hospital again, and my beads *finally* arrived on July 5. Had to jump right in on the MS3 of course, so here's the dark Zephyr through Clue 2. Can't see the beads, but I assure you, they're there, and IMO, it was worth the wait.

My current official guess (subject to change, of course) for the theme of Mystery Stole 3 is the legend of the Egyptian goddess Neith. I swear that the motif within the "pyramid" end of the stole is a scarab, and the edging represents the Nile. (That is, until my next guess!)

Neith is a goddess of the sky, mother of night and day, and the goddess of weaving and arts domestic (did they call it knitting then?). She is also associated with war. MS3 designer Melanie hinted that this would not be a good theme for a wedding. Althogh a wedding is never associated with war (or dung beetles), it is sometimes associated with marriage...

In the meantime...

2007-07-04T11:04:00.000-04:00

MS3 has begun, but my beads for the gray Zephyr yarn have not yet arrived in the mail. When none arrived yesterday and today is a no-mail holiday, there was only one thing to do: start something else!

But MS3 has my full knitting attention right now. Looking at the stash, I spied a couple of skeins of soft white Misti Alpaca. DD donated some silver-lined transparent beads from her jewelry-making stash, and I was on my way. No swatching this time - full speed ahead! Some folks are making two shawls, since the theme colors are black or white. I uess I am, too.

After a long, sleepless night - DH is back in the hospital - Clue 1 is finished. (There are beads, but this quick and dirty pin-and-point shot doesn't show 'em.)

Uncle!

2007-07-01T17:46:00.000-04:00

Okay, okay. I have a gazillion projects lined up, and one languishing on the needles (Jazz). What cut the queue this time?

Mystery Stole 3, that's what!

At least I haven't bought new yarn. I got mine from the basement stash, some lovely Zephyr wool/silk in "Steel". Now I did have to buy a smaller crochet hook (size 12), and a bunch of beads, which haven't arrived yet. But meanwhile, I printed out all the info and dutifully swatched:

Well, to be truthful, it wasn't exactly dutiful - I just wanted to knit. The top piece is on size 3 needles, and the bottom one (the one of choice) is on size 4's. Amazing what a quarter of a millimeter makes, isn't it?

No fewer than seven members of my local group, Frog Pond Fiber Arts, have joined so far. It's positively contageous. If you have the bug to sign up, you'll have to do it post-haste: MS3 closes to new members on July 6.

Diamond Mesh

2007-06-27T09:56:00.000-04:00

Finally! Knitter's Magazine hasn't exactly been batting a thousand for me lately, but there's a project in the current issue that looks good to me.

What yarn? What yarn?

I decided to go stash shopping in the basement. This requires mustering both bravery and imagination on my part, because the choice seems so... final. I'm not such a good knitter that the result is generally better than the possibilities. I'm a brave person, but I'm not very imaginative. I want to have the final project come out perfectly, and I fret that my choice of yarn - especially when the fiber and gauge are way different than the designer's choice -will not come out well. Still, I know I must have stuff that would work.

Well, several years ago, my friend Vicki and I went in together on a yarn deal. We got a large number of cones of yarn for just the cost of shipping. I selected two cones from our lot One was a charcoal boucle, and the other was a pink silk/cotton (whatever did Vicki do with the rest of those cones? :-) ).

After combing through my stash, the cone of pink silk/cotton called to me. Other yarn would have been suitable and would have given me gauge without messing around. But I kept going back to the pink cone. The yarn was too thin, so I loosely plied it together with my spinning wheel. The result was still a bit skinny, so after a gauge swatch, I re-gauged the pattern. It knit up fairly quickly. I finished the seams last night.

I feel especially good because it cost me about fifty cents (broken down from the shipping cost of all the cones - yarn was free)!

Frog Pond

2007-06-27T09:26:00.000-04:00

What a great time we had at the Frog Pond Fiber Frolic! We spent a lazy afternoon experimenting with Easter Egg dye on wool and silk. First we soaked our plain vanilla yarn and fiber in a vinegar and water solution.

Then we created colors! We swished, we dunked, we squirted. We put our creations in ziplock bags to cook in the sun while we had refreshments. Gorgeous!

The Frog Pond is lucky to have Janet, who found a great quantity of Easter Egg dye on clearance after Easter, and had the presence of mind to buy it for the group. We are also lucky to have Vicki, who gathered the supplies and directions for us. And we are lucky to have each other, because we are a mighty creative group together.

I decided to dye sock yarn - could have knit boot socks if it turned out ugly, but I rather like my result.

My result on the silk was ermmmm, okay. The teal I started with was looking too even. However, I had mixed together all the leftover dye from the Frolic, which turned out a kind of pea green. Squirted in splotches over the teal and left to cook a second day, the teal silk now has a little depth. We'll see how it looks when I've spun it into some lace weight yarn. I bet it will look pretty good, in a monochromatic way.

Talk to the hand

2007-05-29T13:15:00.000-04:00

I found this funny quiz on Bonne Marie's blog. Here's my result for "What Finger are You?" (find your finger through the link below).

You Are the Thumb

You're unique and flexible. And you defy any category.
Mentally strong and agile, you do things your own way. And you do them well.
You are a natural leader... but also truly a loner. You inspire many but connect with few.

You get along well with: The Middle Finger

Stay away from: The Pinky

What Finger Are You?

Pretty funny that it says I should stay away from the pinky! I'm not getting along with mine too well. (Or maybe I chould say that I'm not getting along without it too well.)

I know hearing about my bum hand is boring and repetitive and old. Without full use of it, though, there isn't a lot of progress to post. But there's news! They finally resorted to putting a plaster cast on the pinkie to force it into being more straight. The cast will be changed twice a week, stretching the finger back more each time (A digital rack!)

Even better news?
I CAN REALLY KNIT!
The cast keeps my finger immobile enough that I can just about knit to my heart's content. Won't be able to make up for three months worth of major knitlessness, but I might put a dent in my long project list before they remove the cast for good. (Then there will be a re-evaluation of what I can do.)

(Thanks, Bonne Marie, for the hand site!)

Bare Naked

2007-05-27T17:18:00.000-04:00

Score!!! My fiber came in on Friday! As IF I needed more. This is special though (isn't it all?) - a bunch of bare-naked, no color fingerling-weight yarn from KnitPicks and some silk from Pacific Wool and Fiber. Our local Frog Pond Fiber Arts group is having a dye workshop at E's house in a couple of weeks. I haven't done any dyeing yet, so I'm really jazzed about it. I figure fingerling weight is good - I can knit socks. If the colors turn out icky, I'll just wear long pants. Hope to get lucky on the silk, though.

2007-05-22T16:26:00.000-04:00

This is what kind of day it was around here today.

Garbo, fast asleep, never heard me sneak up with the camera.

On the other hand...

2007-05-21T17:25:00.001-04:00

I'm out of the habit of posting, and there's not too much to write about. But okay, okay, it's been over a month.

I started knitting a little. I began a cardi from Maie Landra's new book, Knits from a Painter's Palette. I've been collecting Koigu skeins for a while, and finally broke down and bought the last two. I must be out of my mind - knitting this on size twos when my knitting time is so limited right now. A nice super-bulky sweater or a quick hat would have been more instantly satisfying, but, well, I'm in it now - literally up to the armpits.

I'm still waiting for my hand to heal. It has been eleven weeks since the surgery. I am still struggling with physical therapy, splints, braces, exercises, massage, and heat packs. Knitting has been an adventure. I've had to learn a new way to tension my yarn because some of the digits engaged doing it my usual way are out of commission. If I get enthusiastic and knit more than a few rows at a time, my little finger contracts into my palm, the middle joint freezes at about 45 degrees, and there is some pain. It can take days clamped back in the splint to get the finger to extend again. The Medical Professionals can't or won't say how long therapy will continue, if my vigilance is going to ultimately pay off - or like Sisyphus and the rock, I am doomed to this cycle of flexion and forced extension over and over again forever. But knit I will.

Okay. I'm finished whining (for now).

I'm spinning on my beautiful new wheel a lot - howzat for optimism? If I do eventually knit without restriction, I'll have lots to knit with! And I'm spinning better, too, though I'm still exploring what Hazel can do. I finished 22 ounces of charcoal alpaca, DK weight, for a sweater (pictures when it's all skeined and washed). And look at this lovely pink silk from and blue merino from Elizabeth M! I'm working on some turquoise silk now, too.

More pictures later. I promise!

Greencastle

2007-04-16T17:41:00.001-04:00

Greencastle was, of course, wonderful. Hazel is the BIG news (see post below), and there was much, much more. Robins, Cherry blossoms, Red-winged blackbirds, Prom dresses, Kildeer, Tulips, Greencastle.... Spring is sprung! (Well, sort of. The sleet amd high winds didn't help.) Despite the nasty weather, it was exhilarating to finally see the first show of the season in our area.

I spent like a drunken sailor. I only go to two shows all year, this Fiber Event at Greencastle, and the Michigan Fiber Festival in August. I need to get all the fiber I'll spin in a year, pretty much, and besides, I hear it's healthy to be on a high fiber diet!

First of all, I was enabled by two good friends, Vicki and Michelle. I was lucky enough to get a ride down with Vicki and her DH Phil on Friday, and then ride back with Michelle on Saturday. Since Greencastle is perhaps 3-1/2 hours from my house, I was happy indeed for the rides and for the company.

I did mention Hazel, didn't I? Here's a pic of Michelle and the Jaegers at the Jensen booth.

And here's what other wonderful stuff I found: A kilo of painted "Pansies" Polworth from Susan Markle's Trading Post Fibers booth;

Also from Susan, two painted skeins of Targhee (top two balls), some Fleece Artist BFL roving, and a lovely painted Merino from a lovely person whose booth I've forgotten. (Hmmmm. detect a color rut here? )

An entire Corriedale-Romney cross fleece (6.9 pounds - now there's some spinning!) which I've split with Michelle - this is from the lovely Lola at our friend Charlotte's Prairie Winds Farm near home;

And these two balls of lovely baby alpaca. I bought one ball last year, (spun, foreground), and wanted 16 more ounces for a sweater. Well, I stopped by Nancy Haas's booth - and she had exactly that amount left. SCORE!

There were other buys, too, with more photos for another day: a luscious small white alpaca fleece ("Apollo") from my Union sister Julie Stephens at Thunder Bolt Farm; a baby Shetland fleece I'm splitting with Vicki, some baby Shetland, a hank of Border Leicester roving, and a buttery Corriedale-silk blend that Vicki and I each bought (she has the whole batch at the moment)... all to share later.

Oh - and did I happen to mention Hazel? She is all settled in with her sisters, Inez (my trusty Lendrum in the middle), and little Amelie in the back, the tiny Cabriolet.

Meet Hazel.

2007-04-15T13:46:00.001-04:00

Please allow me to introduce you to Hazel. She is posing here with my friend Michelle (middle) and Mr. and Mrs. Jaeger, the Jensen dealers. Hazel is my gorgeous new Jensen D-30 production wheel. She us the big sister to Inez, my Lendrum (who is feeling a tad jealous right now).

I fell in love with Hazel on Friday at the Fiber Event in Greencastle, Indiana. She is all elegant cherry wood, and she spins with an effortless grace heretofore unknown to me. Hazel is a "mirror image" wheel (right flyer for us Southpaws). Her distaff is charming (and keeps roving out of the inquisitive paws of Oliver).

I had been longing for a production wheel for some time, and after I spun on this wheel, I couldn't get her out of my mind. When I talked it over with my DH on Friday night, and he told me, "go for it!" I weakly suggested to Michelle that she should talk me out of it. Instead, Michelle informed me that Hazel would certainly fit in the back seat of her car - and backed it up by rising at the crack of dawn to drive me back to Greencastle to buy her.

Though the weather was brutal - snow, sleet and wind - we had fun shopping for another three hours, then, loading Hazel into the back seat of Michelle's auto (where she fit nicely), we headed for home.

Tomorrow: all the other wonderful things from the Fiber Event.

New Baby

2007-04-13T17:17:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday 13!

Here's the news: I am the proud keeper of this marvelous wee wheel. My friend Janet King, who took this picture, put it up for sale at our local group's web site (the Frog Pond) a couple of weeks ago. I thought it was a wonderful buy, but there are several new spinners in our lovely group who don't have wheels. I wanted to make sure they got first dibs before I glommed on to this beauty.

Aubrey had her eye on it, but in the end she chose a beautiful hand-painted Ashford wheel. You should have seen Aubrey spinning on the wheel she wound up buying. It looked as if she had been spinning on it all her life.

This little baby is tiny, and more portable even than my folding Lendrum (certainly a lot lighter!). The wheel is a mere 15 inches in diameter, and it only measures 28 inches to the top of the flyer. Janet thinks it might have been made for a child. Though petite, I don't think this is a beginner wheel, mainly because the treadle is steep. I seem to have taken to it well though, even with my tall frame (child at heart?!).

Now off to play and to name the little tyke....

In like a lion...

2007-04-11T12:04:00.000-04:00

I know, I know, it's March that is supposed to come in like like a lion, and here it is April! This is what it looked like outside my door this morning. Perhaps we should revise those old weather axioms...

I spent the morning at Kiva. If you haven't heard of it yet, Kiva is a non-profit organization which lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. It has been featured on PBS and in the New York Times, along with other media coverage. For as little as 25 bucks, you too can become a "world bank" for those in need. The loan rate of return of your money is very high - pretty much 100% - though I would consider that if my investment wound up being a donation, it would still be a good deed indeed. Can't you just imagine what the result would be if every person who was able to loan a few bucks - did?

On the hand front,

Still unable to knit, and typing is slow. I have some spinning news to share tomorrow. Stay tuned!

The Spin Cycle

2007-03-17T10:24:00.000-04:00

Well, the Medical Folks won't tell me how long I must wear the sado-splint, but my hand is doing better each day. Typing is hard still - all with my left hand - and I am unable to knit at all.

But I can spin! I'm limited to a half hour at a time and it has to be easy stuff with light tension. I make it a reward for doing the difficult physical therapy every few hours.

Here's some sumptuous alpaca I've been working on the past few days, which I bought at Greencastle last year. I wish I had a lot more of it.

And remember this? (Of course not! It's been a while!) I bought it last August at Michigan Fiber Festival. I spun most of it at the Lindenwood Spinning Retreat (see the post on the retreat below). The finished yarn is pretty darn rustic. Frankly, I think it looked nicer in it's raw potential than my clumsy finished product, but I'm happy enough with it to be designing a jacket for it (sideways, shawl collar). I'm grateful to my very DH, who set the twist for me and learned how to twist skeins today.

Just hope I can knit it sometime soon!

Stitches

2007-03-08T10:04:00.000-05:00

Knitters aren't the only group making stitches. So is my hand surgeon! Here's why posting is going to be a little slow around here.

Typing is awkward, like trying to learn how to knit backwards. Can't knit at all (aaarrrggghhhh!), but maybe I'll be able to spin in a few days.

More when I'm able.

Spinning Retreat

2007-03-03T14:47:00.000-05:00

A whole week has gone by, and I still haven't raved about the spinning retreat.

Clickety-Clack Ewe joined some old friends and a lot of new ones at Lindenwood for a gloriuos weekend of just spinning. This was spinning with no chores. There was no housework to do, no teenage children to fret over or ferry around, and no meal preparation. DH took care of all of that, bless his generous heart!

There were about thirty wonderful women there. We ate all our meals together in the convent's lower level , but otherwise all our waking hours were spent spinning and talking together. Bed was when we felt like it - for some, that was close to midnight.

Many brought food to share, so there was some serious diet-busting snacking going on. (Leave it to me to take a picture of the food!)

Naturally there was fiber to buy, too. See that bag front and center of the picture marked "Desert Sundown?" It's mine!

I had waaaaay more pictures, but I didn't bring fresh batteries, so they aren't useable. Otherwise, you could see that I got to sit next to my friend Elizabeth M the entire weekend, and was happy to see my friends Charlotte, Peggy and Susan. I really wish all my other Frog Pond Fiber Arts spinning friends could have been there, too.

Swallowtail

2007-02-23T12:52:00.000-05:00

Remember this?

It's my handspun from my friend Elizabeth M's beautiful merino. On the way back from Nova Scotia, it became this:

The Swallowtail Shawl by Evelyn A. Clark.

I blocked it after we had the first Frog Pond Fiber Frolic, but didn't get around to taking pictures until today.

Nova Scotia, Part 3 - Nirvana at Baddeck

2007-02-14T10:31:00.000-05:00

On our last full day in Canada, I still had in mind that I wanted some Fleece Artist fiber to bring back with me. The Fleece Artist is based in Halifax, and would be a perfect souvenir. Goodness knows I already had wool from NS (see post below), but I had my heart set.

The odds were slim, though. After having visited Moraff's, there was only one other not-so-LYS to visit. Baadeck Yarns was more than an hour away over icy mountain roads. DH wrapped up business in the early afternoon, so we bravely piled in the car. We both wanted to see the countryside whether the shop turned out to be a disappointment or not (or closed).

WELL! Let me tell you! I was overwhelmed and I can't help gushing. I believe that Baadeck Yarns is about the best yarn shop I've ever seen. Even my long-suffering shop-worn DH remarked that it was the best yarn shop he had been in. He took these pictures while I was in that fiber trance.

Owner Patricia Fields showed me her ROOM full of Fleece Artist yarns and roving. The Fleece Artist dyes fiber especially for Baadeck Yarns with colors that reflect the local surrounding sea and landscapes. Howzat for a perfect souvenir?

I brought home BFL roving in wonderful Cape Breton colors for myself and for friends, skeins of sock yarn, Scotia Silk, Merino and Peter Rabbit from Fleece Artist. DH picked out some soft gray Regia silk for socks. I couldn't resist some Louisa Harding "Impression" for fingerless gloves. And yes, I managed to get ALL of it in my suitcase. When I get it all knit, I'm calling Patricia for reinforcement.

Like an exquisite meal, Baddeck Yarns shop is not about quantity, but rather quality (not necessarily expensive, either), and sublime taste. If I were stranded on a desert island and could have only one yarn shop, Dear Knitterati, Baadeck Yarns would be it.

It was heaven.

Nova Scotia, Part II

2007-02-12T19:52:00.000-05:00

Isn't this a spectacular view from our hotel room window in Sydney?

The scene was beautiful from a cozy chair in our room. But after breakfast the next morning, I came to realize that I had to venture out into that frigid atmosphere, rent a car, and forage for some yarn. I had some handspun with me, but one needs souvenirs, doesn't one?

Moraff's is in an older building located right in Sydney. It is stacked from the floorboards to Victorian high ceiling with a formidable number of plastic-sheathed clusters of yarn. There was a ton of Patons, Bernat and similar "workhorse" yarns. Not much luxurious, frivolous stuff here!

No books that I could see either, but there was an enormous rack of pamphlets. There were also dozens of binders along the long ledge behind the counter, all stuffed with patterns dating back decades. What a gold mine for vintage pattern seekers!

The owner was a charming, diminutive lady with white hair and inquisitive eyes. I decided this might be just the place to get some superwash wool and a pattern for my twin nephews' new Aran sweaters. Declan wanted green, and Riley wanted red.

When I described what I was looking for, I was promptly handed a Patons booklet and 13 skeins of Bouquet Marina superwash wool in red. No poking around in those stacks for me!

Green was harder. The first color she showed me was not what I had in mind. Dear Owner then pulled out some skeins of Briggs & Little "Heritage". (It might as well have been named "Brillo and Little"!) It is clearly not superwash, but she briskly sold me this extremely scratchy "good local wool". IMHO, it is completely unsuitable for a child's machine-washable sweater, but the "good local wool" is a good local souvenir. It will become a Lucy bag if it felts the way I think it will.

Back at the hotel, I read the fine print on the Bouquet Marina superwash. it said, "Machine wash for 2 minutes. Machine dry for 5 minutes." Uh-oh... it seems I have the Paleolithic version of superwash. A Google search for it later turned up nothing except a few lonely skeins on eBay and an indication that Bouquet was sold to Spinrite years ago - likely before there was an internet.

Batting a big zero now for the boys' Aran sweater yarn.
Ah well.
Next: The most fabulous knit shop I've ever seen!

The Trip to Sydney, Nova Scotia, Part 1

2007-02-10T16:34:00.000-05:00

Before it is too distant a memory, let me tell you about my trip to Sydney, Nova Scotia at the end of January. I went with DH, who needed to go for business. My mother's ancestors made the trip to Nova Scotia from Spinningdale, Scotland in the late 1700s. My great-great grandmother Mary Jane Ross is from Cape Breton (Sydney Mines), and I wanted to have a look around.

A trip to Sydney from Middle America is a four-flight proposition. This pales in comparison with the voyage across the Atlantic in a boat, but it certainly was harrowing enough! We slogged through security in our small local airport, dutifully taking off our coats, sweaters and shoes. Security at our bitty regional airport is tighter than any international airport I've ever experienced. My knitting bag (with the Cameron shawl in progress, scroll below) was waved through. I had been a bit concerned about my Swiss Army clipper in my notions bag. It's a small Swiss Army knife without the blade, but has a little nail file, a wee screwdriver, an ingenious pair of nail clippers, and a tiny pair of scissors. My sister had given it to me for Christmas, and the package said it was TSA approved. To my relief, it passed muster. I was soon knitting away.

We flew to Detroit, and then to Dulles/Washington DC, where we had to change airlines. Dulles is a nightmare, BTW - stay the heck away from there, if you can. United Airlines employees were surly, disorganized, harried and astoundingly rude to absolutely everyone. Other passengers, unsolicited, assured us that such treatment is the norm at Dulles. It took us over two HOURS simply to get our boarding passes.

From Dulles, we flew to Halifax. Welcome to Canada!! Canadian airport officials were just as efficient as their American counterpoints, only friendlier. However, as my bag went through the security checkpoint for the third time that day, my knitting bag was stopped.

"What's this?" asked an agent, digging out a small object.
"Oh, that's the new Swiss clipper. It doesn't have a knife. Our TSA approved it for air travel." I politely replied.
"Well!", he huffed. "America is NOT in charge in Canada. We have our own rules here!"
"Oh", says I. "Of course Canada has its own rules! I had just assumed they wouldn't be as silly as the US ones."
"I'll have to take this away from you. No scissors allowed here in Canada."

I looked in disbelief at the scissors. The entire exterior length of the gadget is 2-1/2 inches long. Allowing for an inside mount, pivot point, and a center rivet holding the scissors together, the scissor blades could not have measured more than an inch. I don't imagine I could have even snipped through bulky yarn without a couple of passes. (Post note: I have since replaced the Swiss Army clipper, and the scissor blade measures 5/8".)

Even if I could have theoretically posed a real threat with that diminutive thing, I have three questions:

After flying all the way to Detroit, and then to Washington DC, the Capital of America; and then to Halifax, the Capital of Nova Scotia, did they really imagine that anyone might choose to threaten the puddle jumper to Cape Breton?!
Who knew that the terr*r*sts the Canadians are expecting are different from terr*r*sts potentially threatening the USA? (Why else would there be different rules?)
Did they ever get a good look at a 29" circ - sharp and shiny and connected with a long, strong wire?

Best not to point to too much absurdity here. I suspect that most of us knitters are more dangerous without our knitting needles. I know it's safer for everyone if I have them with me on those long flights!

Phew! Finally to our final destination. We were the last two out of the Sydney airport save the sentry, sipping coffee at his lonely post.

And the hotel was very nice (white building in the foreground above, pictured without the actual snow and ice).

Six Weird Things

2007-02-10T14:40:00.000-05:00

Sarah tagged me! Yikes! She said:

Your'e it! THE RULES: Each player of this game starts with the ‘6 weird things about you.’ People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 6 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says ‘you are tagged’ in their comments and tell them to read your blog.

Only six? That shouldn't be too darn hard for me! Here goes:

My family didn't have a television when we were growing up. The prerequisite was that all five children had to have all A's on our report cards. We did make it from time to time, but my parents didn't seem to get around to the TV store before somebody would get a B in something during the next grading period. (Naturally, I grew up to be a broadcast engineer for CBS.)

I learned to knit by downloading instructions from the internet. I was in a boring six-week negotiation marathon out of town; my sister was in her eighth month of pregnancy with twins; I needed something productive to do. Knitting seemed reasonable. Anyhow, this negotiation put me in the mood for pointy sticks. I bought a Knitters magazine (Fall 1999) at a local bookstore and ordered some yarn and needles from the Patternworks website to the hotel. I left with a signed contract and two baby jackets (Baby Surprises!).
I really hate to hear people chew (crunch, slurp) food. Arrrrggggghhhhhh! It's like nails on a blackboard to me. It makes me squirm. I don't like Mexican restaurants because people crunch tortilla chips in a decibel meter-pegging way. I eat popcorn in theaters in self-defense. I got off a city bus once and paid to take the next one because somebody was popping gum behind me.
I went to college at the same time as high school. They called it an "accelerated student program". I called it a LOT of homework.

5.Caffeine in the morning wakes me up like everybody else, but caffeine at night makes me sleepy.

6. I like spiders and snakes and mice and such critters that make some others nervous. (I don't think that makes me weird. I think it makes everybody else weird.)

Who gets tagged now?
E!, Michelle, Vicki, Opal, Del, JennyRaye , You're it!

WooLee Winder!!

2007-02-09T11:41:00.000-05:00

I'm so excited about this new spinning contraption! I saved up and got it for myself for my birthday.

It's a WooLee Winder, which finally arrived last Saturday right after our Frog Pond Frolic. This wonderful tool guides the yarn coming onto the bobbin to be distributed evenly without moving the yarn up and down the hooks. I expected some improvement in spinning, but this is fab-u-lous! No more stopping every few minutes to adjust the bobbin take-up spot. You just spin, and spin, and spin....

The yarn on the bobbin was spin from Elizabeth Matthew's beautiful dyed fiber - this being superwash merino I got on Saturday.

Don't do what I did, though - tried to copy Svenja's technique of winding singles directly onto a ball winder - the object was to ply from the inside and outside back onto a bobbin. Well, the inside pull tangled badly, ruining the core of the ball. After spending about four hours trying to untangle the snarl, I wound up throwing about an ounce of it away. Live and learn!

Cameron!!

2007-02-05T09:28:00.000-05:00

Well, here's the finished Cameron. A bit wonky photo, I apologize; but the makeshift clothesline was all I could muster at the time.

Finally, finally, it is done!

Cameron has been modified from the original pattern a little. I added a different edging. The substitute is a bit wider than the original, and I needed to add some repeats to ease it around the corners. It took an extra 450 yards.

This shawl seemed to take forever. I started it around the first of November, and got about halfway through the border by Thanksgiving. December almost didn't count for knitting - too much Other Than Knitting stuff to do.

January finally saw some needle action. The border was finished, and the endless edging marathon began. The finale came with four, count 'em four, flights during the last week of January to get DH and me to Sydney, Nova Scotia. I finished the last row of the edging as we were taxi-ing to the gate in Sydney. Jumping the gun, without proper tools, I tried to graft edging at the hotel. I made a a mess. Back home last Monday, I ripped back and did a much better job.

I took my heart in my mouth and began to wash and block. Because the Cameron is knit of single-ply cobweb, I was very timid about blocking it firmly. I had a nightmare about the single-ply popping apart and spilling stitches all over the floor.

Another thing: my shawl-blocking has always been done in the basement because I have a nice, wide-open, carpeted place to spread out my gingham sheet which serves as a blocking guide. You can barely see it in the photo, but I wanted to show the blocking wires, which can be made out. Anyhow, I can shut the door to the basement, giving no cats will have a chance to bed down or pee on my work. I cannot tell you how surprised I was to discover that one of my cats, Myrtle, had learned to open the basement door (yep, I watched her do it!), letting in the shawl-snuggling horde. No damage, luckily, but I can assure you that the shawl was off the floor post-haste.

For my daughter's amusement, I pulled it through my husband's wedding ring before folding it safely away...

Frog Pond Fiber Frolic

2007-02-04T16:42:00.000-05:00

Whoooo-eeee! What a riot! I hope everybody who came over had as good a time as I did. Eleven people braved sub-zero temperatures, blowing snow, and black ice to come to my house yesterday for the first Frog Pond Fiber Frolic - this first of many, I bet!

We ate, we drank hot mulled cider, tea, and a delicious hazelnut coffee that Katy brought. Food - well! Vicki whipped up a great vegetairan chili. Carol brought a salad that had us begging for the recipe. Liz L made a fruit salad, and E! brought a wonderful stollen her mother made. We had great hummus, cheese and crackers, tiny quiches, too.

There was fiber from Elizabeth M and Peggy and Vicki. There were door prizes. Aubrey was a pro at spinning some silk hankies, and Elizabeth M got the hang of spinning silk in an instant, too. Peggy, Suzanne and Svenja came from what seemed the edge of the earth in yesterday's weather - the Laporte area. Needles were flying, wheels were spinning, and I can't wait to do it again.

Just Chillin'??

2007-02-01T21:33:00.000-05:00

Nope! Clickety-Clack Ewe has been absent from the blog for several months, but certainly not idle. I do wish I had written sooner, but there hasn't been time!

There were the winter holidays, of course, which was a whirlwind of preparations and travel.

We also have been busy beginning a new group here in Michiana for fiber artists of many stripes, named "Frog Pond Fiber Arts". Mainly, our group is knitters and spinners. We also welcome crocheters, hand-felters, weavers, dyers, and fiber growers. We are warm and informal, and we're having a lot of fun at our monthly meetings.

This weekend, we're having a Frog Pond Fiber Frolic at my house. We'll have food drink and merriment, and door prizes, too, plus knitting and spinning videos to watch. I'm a little nervous about it - I've never hosted a gathering other than family at my house before. Then again, the knitters and spinners of this group are family....

And guess who needs to clean the house for this event?!? I'm off to dig out the feather duster...

Border Patrol

2006-12-10T12:42:00.000-05:00

The border is done!! And the set-up row for the edging, too. Here's a fast, not-too-darn-good photo: The photo was hasty because I believe in the 5-second rule for flinging knitting on a floor that was not vacuumed immediately prior to the flinging. (I would rather knit than vacuum, dontcha know.) Come to think of it, I should probably exclude white UFOs from that rule...

I hope I won't offend the shawl's designer, Sharon Miller, but I'm choosing a different edge than the original called for in her pattern. Sharon calls for a simple mesh Van Dyke edging, but I fear that I will go insane at the monotonous repitition of Van Dyke for more than 20 feet of knitting...

So, not for design as much as for sanity, I've chosen the Rippled Diamond edging from Sharon's "Heirloom Knitting" book. It seems to me quite an appropriate edging for the Cameron, though it is deeper than the original pattern. Since I ordered extra cobweb yarn, I'm pretty sure I'll have enough. When I get some of it done, I'll show you.

Score!

2006-12-05T18:17:00.000-05:00

Wow! Clickety-Clack Ewe scored big. Look at the great bag scored from Jenny Setser from Winterhaven Fiber Farm!

This bag is big enough for a major knitting project. I love it. I spied it in the making during a recent trip to the farm and bought it without quite knowing how it would end up. When it arrived a day or two ago, I saw that it had exceeded my expectations. Note the salamander on the upper left. Isn't Jenny a talented felt artist?

She's salivating, folks.

2006-11-21T09:12:00.000-05:00

My 10% discount postcard from Sheep's Clothing Knitting Supply came in the mail yesterday. Because I am a knitting guild member, I get the 10% off all year round. So - even though I can't take specific advantage of the postcard's offer, it's incentive enough to get into the car and go!
I can't help it. It's a Pavlovian response. You know - the famous experiment wherein Pavlov induced a stimulus by ringing a bell each time he fed a dog. Pretty soon, the dog salivated simply when it heard the bell. My sister used rabbits for her copycat Pavlov's experiment in grade school. She got more rabbits. I'm not quite sure which stimulus applied in that case...

For me, I'm not sure whether that salivation is due to the words "Sheep's Clothing" or simply "sale".

On the Road Again...

2006-11-20T18:34:00.000-05:00

We had such a good adventure one rainy day last week! A couple of knitting friends and I headed south of town to Jenny Setser's Winterhaven farm in Walkerton. I'm too lazy to type all of the things Jenny carries (I did try, but gave up), so check out her web site to Jenny's entire list.

There are lots of friendly cats and a couple of dogs, too. But it was too wet and nasty outside to visit the alpacas, sheep and other critters...

I came away from Jenny's with a very good haul of needle-felting supplies. I've been wanting to try it out for a while now. Beware! I'm just in the mood to be stab-stab-stabbing needles!! (Wheek-wheek-wheek Psycho sounds here...)

From Jenny's, we stopped at at a lovely bakery in North Liberty for some lunch. We stuffed ourselves with meatball sandwiches and such, and then stuffed what room was left in the trunk with bakery goods to bring home.

Revived, we headed to Knitting in the Round. There is a sale going on here - 30% this week, if you get a chance to go - although we didn't leave you much. Knitting in the Round is moving to Rolling Prairie in a few months, so the stock is priced to move. It was too nasty to get out of the car for the shot of the building - so here's what the place looks like through a windshield.

We couldn't resist stopping by to see Eleanor Heckaman at her shop on 31. She has gorgeous yarns and kits in right now. I can't help it - I don't ever leave there without buying something. No pics - sorry - too rapt in yarn.

Looking Pretty Good...

2006-11-15T08:07:00.000-05:00

I'm really enjoying the knitting.

I'm about halfway through the border on the Cameron. Right now, there are 720 stitches per round, so it's a bit pokey. It looks really lumpy and ratty though, doesn't it? I'll be happy when it's time to block it. That ugly-ducking-to-swan, before-and-after, sow's-ear-to-silk-purse magic thrills me (hopefully) every time.

I still haven't figured out how many stitches there are in the completed shawl. I've used nearly seven of the eleven balls called for. I generally use the "How-Many-Stitches-ARE-There-In-This-Thing" information to spur myself on in the final stretch when the twenty-some-odd feet of edging seems impossibly long.

Holiday Knitting

2006-11-14T09:01:00.000-05:00

Clickety-Clack Ewe hesitates even to post this before Thanksgiving because the holiday retail frenzy for the season begins earlier every dang year,and there is no wish to convey that this is condoned in any way. Surely by the year 2020, if the merchants have anything to say about it, the "season" will begin by Epiphany (Jan 6)!

Clickety-Clack Ewe used to knit for the holidays, but not any more. The Christmas stockings are an exception, joyfully knit with each addition to the family.

Retailers begin their displays before Halloween, but I used to plan Christmas knitting in early the new year for a good head start. There would be an ambitious list of ambitious projects. The list grew each month, but items on the needles languished by Easter and were practically UFOs by the Fourth of July. Labor Day would jangle alarm bells, and the knitting would commence in frazzled earnest. Projects suffered as the Big Deadline loomed. Worry set in about having forgotten somebody, which turned to panic when the absent name turned up. (To be fair, the "forgotten somebody" was nearly always not forgotten at all, but somebody for whom I belatedly decided I should knit something.) I worried too, for instance, that my brother might be insulted if my sisters got cardigans and he wound up with only a scarf.

I'm a fairly speedy knitter, but I like going at my own natural pace. I do not like feeling as if my knitting were a race against the clock. I was doing less thinking of the recipient fondly during the process than these kinds of things:

Doing the mental math: how many seconds per stitch, how many stitches per row, how many rows, how many increases/decreases to factor in, how much time to seam and block to get the project done;
Planning meals with less prep work in order to knit more minutes, or ignoring housework;
How late to stay up through the wee hours and still get up to see DD off to school in the morning (and remember the event);
Thinking of Lucy and Ethyl in that famous speed-up scene at the conveyer belt at the candy factory....

Then - Light Finally Dawned on my Rocky Dome! I now knit for birthdays.
There are still deadlines, but they come at a more leisurely pace spaced throughout the year. It also feels more personal to me - and undoubtedly the recipient feels it, too. Furthermore, if I don't feel like knitting something for a birthday, nobody feels left out with a non-knitted present.

Yikes! Dear Big Sister's birthday is the day after Epiphany....

Meeting Tomorrow Night (REVISED!)

2006-11-13T10:03:00.000-05:00

We're trying a new meeting spot for knitters and spinners in Michiana. It will be tomorrow night (Tuesday, November 14) at the Harris Library on Elm Road from 6:30 - 8:30. We'll have refreshments, too! Hope to see you there....
Map to Harris Library (51446 Elm Rd)

In the Middle (Cameron Shawl)

2006-11-09T14:03:00.000-05:00

The center of the shawl is finished and flung on the rug for this quick photo. The stitches have been picked up on all four sides for the edging, which I'm going to knit in the round. Knitting in the round avoids grafting the corners, but it means I'll have to purl every other row instead of knitting it.

"Edging" seems a bit of a misnomer, don't you think? There will be 110 rows, which seems more like "middle" than "edge" to me. At a beginning number of 504 stitches per row and adding 4 more stitches each row over 110 rows - well, I just don't want to know or it will simply seem overwhelming. And then after the edging - THEN there's a border to knit.

Whew! What have I taken on here?!?

Joining lace yarn

2006-11-07T08:22:00.000-05:00

My Cameron Shawl pattern advises that when it comes time to begin a new ball of yarn to leave long tails for weaving in later. The time has come, but I'm a bit leery of my weaving-in skills for such open work as lace. The Cameron uses about 11 balls of Jamieson's Ultra Cobweb (a single-ply yarn), and I concluded that hiding at least 22 ends would really be pushing my luck. Ever the coward, I decided on a different method. Well, two, actually.

The Shetland wool would take a simple spit-splice beautifully, but I am concerned about how that kind of join would hold up when it comes to blocking the shawl. I know for a fact that spit-splicing works just fine, but I don't want to test that theory to the max. The prospect that severe blocking will pop the joins and spill my hard-earned stitches all over the floor makes me weak in the knees. So for better or worse, I'm using a belt-and suspenders combination of Russian Join and Spit-Splice.

First, the end of the first ball is looped around the start of the new ball. A needle is threaded with one of the ends.

Next, the first end is woven back on itself, catching the yarn with itty bitty stitches. (If the join were not going to be felted together with the spit splice, I would make the weaving a bit longer.)

The end is pulled through and tightened, trapping the free end of the other ball.

The same technique is applied to the other end. Both ends are now interlinked, with the ends woven back on themselves.

The free ends are then carefully trimmed at a steep angle (not shown). With embroidery scissors, I fray them back so they can feather back into the strand.

Now for the fun "spit splice" part. I stick the woven section in my mouth and get it wet. (EWWW, you say? The shawl gets washed later!) Then I rub the section briskly between my palms for a minute or two until the join is nice and even. You can see the result here. The join is in the yarn right above the scissors, between the bird's tail and the beak. I bet a skein of sock yarn that you'll never find one of these joins in the finished shawl!

Back to knitting...

For my Lacevember Buds...Lacevember mememe

2006-11-07T07:53:00.000-05:00

Are you a lace knitting fan? Join the Lacevember blog. These questions are in response to the contest meme there.

THE KNITTING QUESTIONS, or THE USUAL SUSPECTS
How long have you been knitting? Seven years.
How did you learn to knit? While on an extended stay away from home, I downloaded instructions from the internet and had needles and yarn overnighted to the hotel. I came home with a negotiated contract and two baby jackets for my sister's newborn twins.
Favorite thing about knitting? It used to be just for relaxation. Now its a full-blown addiction. I think they'd have to put me in a 30 day program to attempt to get me to stop (I'd sneak in sock needles by hiding them in the seams of my luggage and unravel my sweaters...)
How long have you been knitting lace? Serious lace - for about a year and a half. (But see bed jacket post below.)
Favorite thing about knitting lace: At first, the math intrigued me. Now, it's like singing a song. A good lace pattern flows like music through my head, and my fingers dance. And the results-! A good sized shawl is an Accomplishment.

THE YARN QUESTIONS, or FLASH YOUR STASH
Favorite lace yarn? Zephyr, so far. There's lots more to try.
Variegated or solids for shawls? Solid. Or subtle.
Favorite lace color? All of 'em! Except I'm chicken to knit black.

TECHNIQUE, or SHOW US YOUR SKILLZ
Circs or straights? Circs all the way. Inox for lace.
Favorite lace knitting trick? Unvented a way to handle that hippo-on-ice skates circular start: Cast on required stitches on just three bamboo needles three sizes smaller than your chosen needle size. Use a different number of stitches on each needle, so you can tell which comes next. (You can rearrange in a couple of rows.) Go up a needle size per round until you get to your regular needle size. This technique squelches the fumbling, and you don't twist the work. Plus it looks nicer.
Lifelines? Nope! They get in my way.
If so with what? I used to use dental floss, but I didn't like the smell of minty lace !
Fancy blocking wires, or just sewing pins stuck in your carpet? Fancy blocking wires, AND T-Pins, AND sewing pins stuck in the carpet (and in an occasional foot). I take "block severely" to heart.
Pattern, or can you follow directions? I can actually follow directions. I haven't messed with altering existing lace patterns, but I've designed a few of my own, too.
Shawls or lacey items? Both, but I enjoy shawls the most.
Triangle, rectangle, or circular shawls? I haven't tried a circle yet, or I'd say I all of 'em.
Charts or printed instructions? Charts.
Favorite lace you've knit? Frost Flowers and Leaves. Pacific Northwest was also fun.
Favorite lace you want to knit? Niebling's Lyra, if I could get my hands on it.

JUST FUN, YUP THAT'S RIGHT, JUST FOR FUN
Favorite jelly belly flavor? The flavor you get when you cram a handful of them in your mouth at once. (weird that I like solid colors for lace knitting, huh?)
Tell me everything you know about Eric the Red..... Is that a new Lorna's Laces colorway?
Coke, classic or with lime? Plain ole, but rarely touch the stuff.
Holiday carols, sing along, or wish they would be banned from all public airwaves? Banned from all airways before Thanksgiving, then 24/7 on ONE station through Christmas, sung with nostalgia and fervor.
What is the definition of irony? This involves my Rowenta (named Wyvern), knitted bits, pins, and a blocking board.
How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop? Who licks?
Why is my cat always puking in front of my son's bedroom door? It's the gym socks. (Uh-oh! It's not the hand-knit ones, is it?)
What is your superhero power? I can untangle anything.
If the laundry is 9 foot by 11 foot (just dreaming, that's a big laundry room), and the walls are 8 feet tall, and you are going to tile the entire room in tiles that are 3 inches by 5 inches, what color should those tiles be? Light taupe! It makes the whites look whiter, which also means you don't feel obliged to clean the machines as often. (or ever...)
What's for dinner tonight? Dinner? D'ya mind I finish this row first?
What is clogging my children's bathtub drain? Well, you bought a five-pound raw fleece and you have three pounds to spin...

Cameron Shawl Begun

2006-11-05T14:28:00.000-05:00

The center panel for the Cameron shawl is coming right along. Here is the first repeat of 52 rows. There will be four and 2/3 repeats for the center square, comprised of a motif of Madiera and Diamonds.

This is the easy part - the 110 round border is going to take a bit more concentration. Can't wait!

The Bed Jacket

2006-11-03T08:44:00.000-05:00

Mambocat's blog entry about a sweater for her mother invoked a wistful trip down memory lane for Clickety-Clack Ewe.

When my mother became ill late in the fall of 1999, I felt compelled to knit her a bed jacket. It was knit entirely of an intense longing to provide some comfort for my mother and an effort to banish the helplessness I felt by not being able to provide her a cure for her cancer.

There was not a whit of skill involved - only determination, as I only had been knitting for about nine weeks. The pattern was a free internet download from Yarnforward, a frothy lace number I attempted from Lion Brand mohair. I had no idea what some of the instructions meant. I had to look up how to make a yarn-over. I did not have a reference that explained "k 2 tog tbl" for instance, so I made up a version of what I thought it might mean. I plunged ahead with my interpretation of the pattern, determined to finish it before my mother left the planet.

I quickly found out that I was sensitive to the mohair. The upside to the sneezy, eye-watering fiber was that it concealed the fact that there was no identifiable pattern in the lace. It took an entire box of Sudafed to knit the project.

When I presented this creation to my mother, I explained that there were more lacy holes than was intended in the pattern, but every hole was filled with love to surround her. She accepted it gracefully, not inspecting it for the mistakes I assured her were rampant. Like Mambocat's mom, my mother wore that bed jacket in my presence when she was able, and otherwise kept it at the foot of her bed. My mother showed her appreciation until she died a few weeks after she received it.

After her death, her best friend requested to keep the bed jacket. I gratefully sent it along to her, with the hope that the holes, filled with love, gave her peace as well.

Holes in One

2006-11-01T06:34:00.000-05:00

Clickety-Clack Ewe finally decided on the new project. It will be the Cameron Lace Shawl from Heirloom Knitting.

The Jamieson Cobweb Ultra Shetland yarn isn't the thinnest in the CCE stash, but still, it seems as it it might break if breathed upon. We'll see what happens....

2006-10-31T08:26:00.000-05:00

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Sheep's Clothing

2006-10-30T17:03:00.000-05:00

As you can see from the passenger window, Saturday morning was a perfect day for a jaunt to Sheep's Clothing, a 75 minute drive to Valparaiso from my house. Elizabeth drove her MIL, Michelle, Vicki and I to that mecca I consider to be my LYS. I suppose it's a good thing that the shop is not closer - I would be spending all the grocery money.

Paula, the owner of Sheep's Clothing (left in photo), posed with two of her knowledgeable staffers, Sue and Tracey.

In case you haven't been, this shop has four rooms filled to the rafters with yarn. There is a large section with all the books - and I mean all the books (the photo shows just a few).

Another section has a huge array of patterns. A third room holds a big selection of needles and notions - and more yarn. A fourth room serves as a small classroom for maybe eight students - even more yarn is stored there, too. (A larger classroom is located in another part of the
building.)

Elizabeth and her MIL checked out the button selection in one picture. You can catch a glimpse of Elizabeth's spectacular cardi - she spun the yarn for it!

I was also happy to spot fellow guild member Bettye G. enhancing her stash. Since neither of us attend our guild's official meetings any longer (problem with location), it was especially delightful to see her again.

We spent several hours browsing there and at "La Beada Loca", a bead shop located across the small parking lot. If you make the trip, there are several interesting restaurants within walking distance.

Sheep's Clothing offers 10% off with your guild membership card. It is located at 257 Indiana Ave in Valparaiso. The hours (Central time) are:
M-F 10 - 5:30
Thu 10 - 9:00 (open late! Yaay!)
Sat 10 - 3
Closed Sunday.

FO (OT)

2006-10-29T12:42:00.000-05:00

Yep, finished object with porch, off topic (see post below):

The Doghouse

2006-10-28T09:33:00.000-04:00

Okay, it's a cat house, but I was afraid to put it in the title slot for fear of the clientele it would draw! Anyhow, Clickety-Clack Ewe took a brief hiatus from knitting to put this together for two feral cats, Tux and Light Mama. The house came in three flat packages from RTA Woodworking in Ontario, Canada, where Pierre Desjardins and his family make such wonderful houses for outdoor pets. RTA's workmanship is truly impressive. Mr. Desjardins also made a great custom sign with the cats' names on it, which will be placed over the door when the last of the work is done.

The house is built on a raised insulated platform, and its walls and roof are also insulated. The door is cut to the side to allow for more warmth inside. Clickety-Clack Ewe also cut a grommeted hole in the back to allow for plugging in a vet pad. The pad, covered in sheepskin, heats to the temperature of a cat's body when the cat beds down.

The door is a stiff plexiglass swinging affair. Clickety-Clack Ewe intends to install a more lightweight temporary panel (a length of clear plastic bag) this afternoon. It will remain for a few weeks to get the cats to get used to going in and out. It seems that they don't know how to enter the house yet.

There is also a covered porch. The floor of the porch is visible in the photo, but the roof, support posts and flashing will not be attached until the house is in exactly the right spot. (We'll need to fiddle around with placement in a few days, when we also install a separate plywood platform to shelter the food and water supply.) BTW, there is knitting in this project: two knitted mice (Vicki Mikulak's pattern), filled with catnip to entice Tux and Light Mama inside.

Frost on Pumpkin

2006-10-23T10:13:00.000-04:00

Yikes! It started to snow lightly this morning. I stuck my hand with camera outside the front door and quickly took this picture - too cold (36 degrees) to linger with the door open for a second shot. The fine snow isn't visible in the picture, it remains to be seen whether it sticks. At this rate, all the Trick-o-Treaters next week would be well advised to pick Yeti as their persona...

Anyhow, the snow in the air makes me want to spin some fiber.

I had a wonderful time at E's knitting/spinning party on Saturday. While I was there, Vicki gave me a thorough lesson on using a spindle, as I had groused that to her I hadn't been getting the hang of it. I had spun for years on a spindle as a kid, and I couldn't understand why I wasn't just resuming where I left off: muscle memory and all that. I was actually beginning to worry about a neurological lapse...

Well, it turns out that my big problem was that I was trying to spin upside down! NO! Not me upside down - the spindle. As a kid, I had used a bottom-whorl spindle, and the one I bought recently was a top-whorl spindle. Well dontcha know that things are spinning along fine now, and with a little practice drafting, I'll return to my childhood.

The 48 Things You Could Care Less About Meme

2006-10-21T10:54:00.000-04:00

The Akamai Knitter egged me on....

1. FIRST NAME? Jessica (Jess, Jessi)
2. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? Jessica Mitford.
3. WHEN DID YOU LAST CRY? About two weeks ago, immediately after I turned down a dream job in Washington DC.
4. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? Not on the shopping list when I'm scribbling, but I like it well enough for letter-writing. I print like a draftsperson.
5. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCHMEAT? Does prosciutto count? Otherwise, hard salami. Yum!
6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? Yep, I'm a straightforward, loyal and loving friend. I don't make friends very easily, though.
7. DO YOU HAVE A JOURNAL? That would be my blog....
8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? I do, but I squeaked by with 'em. As a kid, I always had tonsillitis.
9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? No way in hell! But If you asked me ten years ago, the answer would be different.
10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? Cocoa Krispies or Sugar Smacks (but I eat oatmeal).
11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? No, I skootch out of them by scraping the back of each heel with the other foot. But then I untie them to put them back on. Odd, huh?
12. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? You betcha. My sister calls me "Popeye."
13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM FLAVOR? Chocolate! Chocolate! Ultimate fave was the unfairly discontinued Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Cherry Garcia. But I've been eating Edy's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough lately and liking it. I could write paragraphs on this subject.
14. SHOE SIZE? 8.5. Sometimes a 9. Hey! If I wear a 10, I won't have to bother with untying shoes at all!
15. RED OR PINK? Pink, but not that candy pink made from carmine or vermilion pigments - the more subtle pinky-brown made with burnt sienna.
16. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? My belly. There's too much of it. (See q 13.)
17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? I miss my mother the most. She died in 2000.
18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU? Of course.
19. WHAT COLOR PANTS, SHIRT AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? Brown Jeans, brown T, pinky-brown shirt, brown flats.
20. LAST THING YOU ATE? Chicken Korma.
21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? A cat is snoring in my lap, and my husband's phone is ringing.
22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? From the 96-crayon box, Pacific Blue.
23. FAVORITE SMELL? Pine or Eucalyptus after rain.
24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? My neighbor across the street, who called to thank me for the baby sweater DD delivered yesterday.
25. THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO? Warm, twinkly eyes, kind eyes.
26. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON you stole THIS from? Found it first on Opal's site, and then Bonne Marie's. I'm not sure whose blog I stole it from (and I certainly can't remember where they got it), but I like both Bonne and Opal very much.
27. FAVORITE DRINK? Scotch. Sometimes a Cosmopolitan.
28. FAVORITE SPORT? Baseball in the summer, hockey in the winter. TO WATCH. I hate playing team sports (see q 16...).
29. EYE COLOR? Hazel.
30. HAT SIZE? 22-3/8. I don't know why on earth I know this.
31. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? Glasses. I have at least dozen pair of reading glasses, and can never find any of them.
32. FAVORITE FOOD? Boring but true: Dark chocolate.
33. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? Happy endings! Scary movies are on my top ten list of things NOT fun to do, along with bowling.
35. SUMMER OR WINTER? Summer, if I must choose one of those. Actually, spring is my favorite.
36. HUGS OR KISSES? Well, both.
37. FAVORITE DESSERT? Opera cake.
38. WHO IS MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Only a few people who read this page ever grace me with comments...
39. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Everybody else.
40. WHAT BOOKS ARE YOU READING? Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff and David Corn; The World of Gerard Mercator by Andrew Taylor.
41. WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? A mouse. Oh! -Printed on the mouse pad? A jellyfish from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
42. WHAT DID YOU WATCH LAST NIGHT ON TV? Nada - I took DD to DD's boyfriend's hockey game.
43. FAVORITE SOUNDS? Bells - Church bells, cat-toy bells, sleigh bells, temple bells, open-the-general-store-door bells, Thai language because it sounds like bells, Tinkerbells.
44. ROLLING STONE OR BEATLES? Beatles.
45. THE FURTHEST YOU'VE BEEN FROM HOME? Liechtenstein, I think.
46. WHAT'S YOUR SPECIAL TALENT? Music, though I squander it. I am a very good advocate, too.
47. WHERE WERE YOU BORN? California
48. WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? I commandeered it from a friend's blog (see q 26).

Wee Aran FO

2006-10-19T08:40:00.000-04:00

The wee Aran jacket for Baby L is finished. It's knitted, seamed, and the inevitable cat hair picked out with a tweezer for better aesthetics - and in case the kid is allergic. It was washed (now dry), and the buttons sewn on.

Clickety-Clack Ewe just needs to make a suitable gift tag. The new, expensive all-in-one printer, that memory hog with all the bells and whistles, doesn't like good card stock, and it's picky about regular paper, too. Arrrggggghhhh!

The pattern is from the Debbie Bliss book pictured. The pattern was not knit before having to revise it (full dilemma here).

Can you imagine the jacket even wider than it is? I reduced the circumference of the sweater by more than 2-1/2 inches. Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure the kid is going to swim in it.

Ah well, so be it. Better too big than too small, don't you agree? It will probably fit him perfectly next August.... maybe his parents will consider an Alaska cruise or a trip to the Yukon next summer.

Road Trip

2006-10-17T08:44:00.000-04:00

We took a family drive on Sunday. DD promised to be absolutely bored, but she wants to go again next week!

I took a few pictures to share. We found more exquisite color in the roadside stands than by the roadside this week, but there was still some respectable peeping.

Have you seen so many pumpkins? These were piled up past the window sills at a farm market.

We stopped in Holland to gawk at the windmill.

I even convinced DH to drive to the LYS in downtown Holland, but alas, it was closed.

What the heck does this have to do with knitting? Well, while we were on the highway, I knit, of course, but I thought you'd enjoy these shots more than the tangle in my lap.

We drove until sunset and then headed home, filled with the beauty of the day.

Fruitful

2006-10-12T01:44:00.000-04:00

Haven't ventured into the dyepot for my wool yet, but my friends Vicki and Bonne Marie are both inspiring me! Vicki posted some great tips on dyeing in the guild newsletter, and I got to have a first-hand look at some of her results. Beautiful! And you can see Bonne Marie's blog here.

I did dye DD's hair yesterday with KoolAid, a beautiful color combination of Black Cherry, Cherry and Tropical Fruit Punch. For 75 cents, it looks fab-u-lous, plus she smells like Carmen Miranda.

Knitting Class

2006-10-11T10:32:00.000-04:00

I headed to Valparaiso last week to attend a knitting class at my favorite yarn shop, Sheep's Clothing. I consider Sheep's Clothing my LYS, even though it's 75 miles away from me. There are several shops here around town, but they quite limited.

I took pictures of Sheeps Clothing to share, but I neglected to change the camera batteries, so the shots were useless. The picture you see on the left is what I was actually seeing in the viewfinder - only I thought it was me, not the camera. Life was so much easier before I needed reading glasses! I don't generally take the time to haul them out to take digital pictures. I just frame and shoot because ostensibly the camera does the focusing. Oh well. Now I have a good excuse to go back to Sheep's Clothing and take my credit card.... er - that is, take more pictures.

The four hour class on Celtic Cables was taught by Fiona Ellis, and I was happy to meet her. I found Fiona to be charming and funny. The class description stated that we would learn to design Celtic cables. What we actually did was make a swatch. However, graph paper was included in each class folder. If we finished our swatch, we were encouraged to design our own Celtic cables in the time remaining. Several of us actually completed our swatches with a few minutes of class time left over, but most did not.

Fiona gave a Power Point presentation after class. I considered her tales about the inspiration for the projects in her book to be the best part of the afternoon. The book, "Inspired Cable Knits" was priced at $35.00. We can find knitting books priced at a discount elsewhere, but I usually buy at the knitting shop because it helps support the shop. I relish new books. However, this one was just too steep for me -even with an autograph.

Roads Not Traveled

2006-10-10T08:39:00.000-04:00

I was formally offered a position in Washington DC late last week, and this morning I formally turned it down. It is a wonderful job. It would have been perfect for me, and I would have been able to make a significant contribution for the employer. But the constraints of family made it too difficult to make it happen. I'm sad about it.

The Aran sweater for Baby L is about 70% finished. Especially today, I will hold close the credo of Elizabeth Zimmerman, the matriarch of knitting: "Knit on with confidence and hope, through all crises."

String 'em up

2006-10-03T07:38:00.000-04:00

The Pacific Northwest shawl is next on the wash/block hit parade. This one (by Evelyn A Clark, with Omaghi Filati Merino Oro) was made in the early spring.

I wore Pacific Northwest a lot this summer, and it showed. It didn't seem to be very dirty, but it had a big distorted YO and two snags to fix - the result of wearing it to too many rough-and-tumble fiber festivals this season.

Pacfic Northwest was also blocked using the string method. A couple more of these blocking sessions, and I'm seriously going to consider making myself a big vertical dressing surface with gingham and insulation board. I have a commercial blocking board which works fine for sweaters and bittier things, but it's too small for these lacy babies. There's entirely too much crawling on the floor of the basement for my taste - and my knees - to get these shawls blocked in nice neat lines. I wind up getting knotted up before the job is perfect, and then I'm not as happy with the result.

Not bad though, eh?

Blocking Party

2006-10-01T08:43:00.000-04:00

I wrote earlier that (when I'm good, about every other year) I wash and block the spring/summer items in the fall and get the winter things ready to wear again. Many of the items haven't been pictured here yet, so as I get to those, I"ll share...

The first item to get a bath is the Flower Basket shawl (Fiber Trends, Evelyn A. Clark, Lorna's Laces). It was blocked after washing by running some crochet cotton through the points on the edges and along the back, then pulling the strings taut. More stretch was added for the points by pinning the string back.

I had help.

And I had even more help trying to get a shot of the dry shawl...

So I got a shot of it on a different chair (yep, another helper in the upper left corner).

Autumn

2006-09-30T08:38:00.000-04:00

I usually notice the change of light in mid-August, don't you? That's when Autumn begins to whisper in with that bluer, clearer light. It's just a whiff, barely noticeable at first. So is the twinge of dread I feel when I discern the change.

I am fond of Autumn. Of course, I love the foliage. The colors, in their late-summer deep maturity even before the miraculous change, are more vivid in this new sunlight. I enjoy the cool evenings, the picture-perfect crops ready for harvest, and the birds forming flocks for migration. Even the long knots of school buses seem perfectly matched for fall.

But fall it is, and with it comes the fall of my mood, the foreboding that winter is almost here. While I'm pleased that the yellowjackets are gone for the year, the butterflies are also no more. Only a few tree frogs still sing into the night. I hold my breath, hoping to see the hummingbirds just once more before they begin their long dangerous trip south. I miss them almost before they go. The summer plants languish at the end of their season, and I steel myself for the first killing frost.

I prepare for the long winter by taking stock of all my hand knits, lightly blocking the winter things - mostly to fluff them and prepare them for use. I wash and block the summer shawls and wraps one at a time, and put them away. I console myself with a survey of the warm wools in my wee knitting studio downstairs. Projects for the season's knitting are considered and refined in my head. I mentally stack the soft skeins against Winter's giant drafty door. Moodiness lifts at the thought of knitting through the winter in front of the fire, or spinning in the library accompanied by an audio book on the iPod.

Winter's icy fingers beckon. Give me wool.

Aran Dance

2006-09-29T08:07:00.000-04:00

I had a wonderful evening knitting on Tuesday knitting with my new friend Michelle at the local coffee shop. I met Michelle in cyberspace through blogland, and then discovered that she practically lives within walking distance. She is new to this area, and I'm so glad she's here!
Michelle thought I should downsize the sweater for Baby L, so I redesigned the pattern. It's now about 2-1/2 inches smaller in circumference. Here's the progress, having started over.

It's a little slow-going because I lost my favorite gull-wing cable needle (again) and am using a toothpick as a (poor) substitute. I tried a dpn, but even the short ones are too long. Hoping to pick up a new gull-wing soon.

The Last Knit

2006-09-28T08:54:00.000-04:00

Ready for laughs? My friend Vicki alerted our guild members to this gem, an animation called The Last Knit. You've got to see this!

Its the little things.

2006-09-26T11:43:00.000-04:00

It's high time that I started a baby jacket for the new kid on the block. My neighbor had Baby L last spring, and I've kept putting off making something for him because, well, it was summer, and, selfishly, lace was a more appetizing knit. I haven't given up on lace projects, but the kid should have a jacket before he gets old enough (a) to refuse to wear it, or (b) gets big enough that the acerage seems too much work.

So here it is: a wee start, begun last Wednesday evening from a nice washable DK wool, and not knitted at much since. This is the ribbing for the back of the sweater. I've been wasting time charting the aran cable design, when I should just be knitting the darn thing so the kid has a chance to wear it while it's still nippy outside.

Here's the rub: there is some trepidation here. I knit two of these sweaters for twin nephews in the one-year-old size, but I had only been knitting for a few months when I completed those. They were so large that the twins still wore them at five years old (a bit of the bolero look by then). I don't know if my gauge was that off then, but the pattern is really, really, huge.

The pattern's smallest size is written for a one-year-old with a 28-1/4 inch circumference. Now Baby L is only 7 months old, and I don't know from babies, but he appears to be a BIG baby. So far, so good. He can grow into it, right?

But here's the math. The pattern calls for the back at 118 stitches - at a gauge of 22sts/4 in. If my calculations are correct, this makes the back 21-1/2 inches - or a 43 inch circumference. Deducting a full 20% for the compression in an aran pattern, that puts the circumference at 34-1/2 inches. That, dear Knitterati, is still a helluva lot of ease.

Here's the question: Do I slog along, knitting a w-i-i-i-d-e sweater? Do babies need that 6-inch wiggle room? Or do I mess with redesigning the pattern for pattern with say, a 32-inch circumference? Comments, please...
(e-mail here)

Two down

2006-09-24T21:44:00.000-04:00

At our knitting meeting at the coffee shop on Wednesday, Elizabeth brought her gorgeous sweater made from her own handspun. I am in awe! It is breathtaking on her - she modeled it for us. I would love to be that talented a spinner and knitter. We were also joined at Bella Vita by Birgit, Carol, Margel, and Mary. It was a lovely night. I really enjoy being in the company of these women.

Elizabeth also brought her Mystery Stole 2, which inspired me to finally block mine. This one is of knit of navy-almost-black KSH ("Night") with a US 4. It turned out pretty large - seven feet long and nearly two feet wide. I couldn't figure out how to photograph it well. After having draped it on a chair and not getting a picture that showed it well, I dusted off the old raggedy dress form. This shot isn't any great shakes, either, what with the old white T-shirt and the bad lighting in the basement, but at least you can see it (sort of).

I finished the Lacey Shrug, too, (pattern from Lisa Souza) but have not been able to get DD to stand still for a few minutes to model it. I draped it on the dress form, too, with the same lousy T-shirt and bad lighting, and took some shots to at least show you the idea. Looks better on her, I promise! When I can nail the kid down, I'll take better pics for Lisa and Brenda Patipa who is the pattern's designer. I've ordered more yarn (different colorway) - I want to eventually knit one for me, too. I shall promise DD that I won't wear it at the same time or place as she wears hers.

Awwwww.....

2006-09-21T23:09:00.000-04:00

Okay, it's not knitting, but I was trying to knit with these two (count 'em, two) cats on my lap. It's my favorite picture of the week. Afer the trials and trubulations of a new kitten in the house - the hissing, the spitting, the swishing of tails - Oliver (the newbie) is giving Dylan a bath. Peace.

Button, button...

2006-09-17T22:45:00.000-04:00

A-HA!
I found the dang buttons! Where, might you ask?

In my dang button box, that's where. I didn't think I actually put them away where they belonged, because (a) I was knitting the sweater so I expected to use them relatively soon, and (b) I'm not that efficient.

I did actually have a cursory look in the button box a few days ago when the earnest search for them began, but they were in a little plastic sleeve and they'd slid from the top of the button pile.

Now they're sewed onto the front of my sweater (can't see 'em in this photo - oh well - ) and I truly have a Finished Object! It's warm and cozy and smells of lavender Eucalan. I blocked the sleeves a little too long, but I'm prone to doing that after years of the bracelet-sleeve look in store-bought tops because of my long monkey arms.

Good thing it's done, too. The temperature is going to drop like a rock in the next few days. The Sideways Sweater - just right for a walk in the neighborhood, or raking leaves (there will be a whole lot of them soon) or an emergency trip to the store for milk for the morning coffee.

Back

2006-09-15T19:09:00.000-04:00

Posting has been on my mind but not at my fingertips. DD is now settled in school. The major bumps she has endured as a result of having a new family, new home, new school, new expectations, new rules, new routine and new friends have finally pretty much simmered down for the short term, but it was a spirited coupla weeks, let me tell you.

DH has been at a convention for the last two weeks, and is due back tomorrow. Besides navigating the waters described above, there was actually a little more to do than usual around here (chores and such). Only a little, though. Hrrrmmmmph!

The new kitten, Oliver, above, gave all the humans in the family a bout of ringworm, missed at the vet where DH took him before he brought him home. (This maneuver was an attempt to avoid such pitfalls, a fact I explained to the vet last week.) We are all now virtually spot-free, including Oliver. I am glad to know that ringworm is not really a worm. But still, doesn't it make you itch just to read this?

Oliver also had a respiratory infection. I have never known a cat to struggle to avoid medications like he can. The little sucker does not run away - given a fleeting chance, he scrambles up to my shoulders and sits at the back of my neck. I look like I'm playing "Twister" to unattach him. The antibiotic was about an eighth the size of a tic-tac. I would open his mouth, drop the pill back by his tonsils, hold his mouth closed, and stroke his throat. He would glare, and then calm down and relax. I let him go and - Pi-TOO-ey! He would spit the little speck out, and I would have to hunt for some glasses to retrieve it. And try, try again...

Okay, enough about the cat, already. I am glad to get back to knitting, though it's mostly in snatches in the middle of the night when I'm up worrying about the kid...

I have an almost FO - a sideways sweater, which is knitted, washed, and blocked, even - here it is, resting on the sweater mesh - I just can't find the dang buttons to sew on it. They're nice ones, too - glass with ribbons of color in them. I hope they turn up before winter sets in. You might be able to see in the picture that the shawl collar is rolling a bit, and I was about to rip it back and substitute a little ribbing when - hold the phone - I like it this way! There are those who might sniff at the color pooling, but I like it, too (though it looks nicer in person). I thought about knitting to avoid it, but decided to just let the yarn do it's thing. After all the recent regimented lace knitting that required so much concentration, it was a refreshing, do-it-in-your-sleep knit. This is a knockabout sweater, and I am tickled the way it came out.

I also started a shrug for DD, which is progressing right along. Here's the lace ribbing that starts the 3/4 sleeve:

The yarn and pattern are both from Lisa Souza (see links). The pattern is called "Lacey Shrug", designed by Brenda Patipa. The yarn is "Fatima", color "Oil Slick". The picture does not do it justice. How Lisa actually captured that rainbow you see in motor oil is magic, and that's exactly what it looks like!

Lisa's gorgeous yarn

2006-08-26T13:04:00.000-04:00

I got a package this morning from Lisa Souza, with four skeins of beautiful yarn. I met Lisa at Convergence earlier this year, where I discovered that she and her husband grew up in the same city in California. She is a gem, warm and lively, and I am red-faced to tell you yhat I proceeded to tell her my life story. Even after suffering that, she STILL sends me yarn!

This is special stuff. Not only is it a treat for the senses, the Fatima (the two rayon/cotton multi skeins) were dyed especially for me on Tuesday. How's that for making a person feel privileged? The Garnet and Peacock "Sock!" Merino really are for socks this time. My friend Opal, the famous Akamai Knitter, has been making socks lately and has inspired me to get a pair or two on the dpns. I have lots of appointments coming up in the next few weeks, and it's always good to have those portable waiting-room projects stashed around under vehicle seats and glove boxes, and in one's handbag, too.

I did haul my sideways sweater project to report for jury duty this week. Happy to have it pass the guards at the entrance to the courthouse, I reported to a windowless room in the basement ringed with pews. Not a single other person in the 40-odd person cattle call had brought something to do or read. All eyes during our loooong wait seemed focused on my Addi's as I plugged away at the sweater. I discovered that Addi's are pretty loud in the utter silence of that dismal waiting room. Even when we were ushered in groups to conference rooms stacked with reading material, everybody just sat and stared at the Addi's. Odd, don't you think?

BTW, I would happily have served as a juror. I am told that I'm a bit of a rarity, like those who really like to eat liver or don't mind the smell of skunk (at a distance). I consider it an honorable duty of citizenship rather than a PITA, and was disappointed to have been dismissed. Turns out that the defendant was being tried for identity theft, and I was a victim of that crime a few years back. Or maybe they just didn't like the knitting...

One story from the Michigan Fiber Festival

2006-08-22T18:15:00.000-04:00

Happily poking around the vendor barns at the Michigan Fiber Festival last Saturday, I found some winsome boucle yarn in a booth with an attractive display. It called to me, and as I admired it, it began to dawn on me that I had seen it somewhere before....... where........ where?

Well, in my darn knitting bag on my shoulder, THAT"S where! I had begun knitting a sideways cardi in that very same yarn. Not only that, dear Knitterati, I had bought the pattern along with the yarn from the very same vendor at Convergence just a couple of months ago. This was to be a supremely lazy project after all my lace knitting - yarn and pattern with no changes, mindless, all in stockinette, and without a single conversion or YO in sight.

I unfurled my nearly completed sweater back and proudly showed it to the vendor. "My dear!", she exclaimed. "That's way too tight! Whatever needle size are you using?"

"Well, sevens...", I replied hesitantly.

Briskly, the vendor said, "That pattern calls for a nine." ("You idiot!" inferred here.)

"A NINE?! My mouth dropped open. "I was pretty sure it said a seven. I really do think I'm using a seven, too."

Vendor digs under the sheet covering her table, rummages around, and pulls out a copy of her pattern.

Yup, the pattern calls for a seven.

"Thank you!", the vendor says. "I'll need to correct these right away! Use a nine - or a ten!"

Now, I usually dutifully do a swatch, but this being a sideways sweater starting at the back, I held up the needle with the first few rows completed and judged it to be long enough. The rest of the knitting is measures in inches, not rows. so I had just plugged away....

Shew-eee! Wasn't it nice to have run into her? Coulda been a disaster, as I would have run out of yarn waaaaaaaay sooner than I planned.

Ribbit, ribbit....

MR.E

2006-08-22T09:06:00.000-04:00

We are sad and we miss you, Mr. E.

Michigan Fiber Festival

2006-08-21T15:22:00.000-04:00

Has it been THAT long since I posted? Yikes! We have been a very busy household during the past few weeks. I've been getting DD ready for her new school school and tending to Mr. E, among a gazillion other things.

I did get a break this weekend. I got to go to the Michigan Fiber Fest in Allegan both Saturday and Sunday! Saturday was rainy and then turned hot and muggy, plus it was so crowded for most of the day that some booths were impossible to explore. Sunday, however, turned out to be perfect. The weather was gorgeous, and it was not nearly as packed. Merchandise was still as plentiful, too, so I needn't have crammed my serious shopping into Saturday. I have all the fiber I can spin now until Greencastle in the early Spring of next year.

Did I remember to bring the camera? Of course not. Not on either day. But then, when I had the gumption to bring it to Greencastle last spring, I was so absorbed by looking at everything that I forgot to take a single shot. This was worse, because a lot of my guild friends were there, and it would have been nice to have some shots of them enjoying themselves. I can share only what I brought home. I cropped shots pretty closely, because I imagine that you're sick of seeing my kitchen counter.

Not having a great local yarn shop nearby, I tend to go wild during these events. I bought some gorgeous fiber, and I bought a few skeins, too, as if I didn't already have enough lace yarn. Be glad you don't have smell-a-vision. The skein with yak smells like the south end of one - something I didn't notice until after I got home. A friend called it "earthy" and another said it smelled like moth repellant. Hey - If I were a moth, I certainly wouldn't go near it, either. Peee-yoo!

I also came home with a woven jacket on Saturday. On Sunday, I found a lonely skein of Suri Alpaca for a steal that I thought might go. I'm elated (and just short of smug) with such a great match!

Note to self - next time, remember to bring the camera - and lunch. Food inside the gates is, to put it politely, limited.

Top photo: Roving, Romney/tencel from Annie Jackson of Annie's Fiber Expressions
2nd Photo: Roving, wool/mohair/llama from Tintagel Farm
3rd photo: 4 colors - silk hankies to spin
4th photo: Picked gray Romney, overdyed
5th photo: Lace yarns. Pink skein of merino/silk; center skein of yak/silk; bottom skein of cashmere.
6th photo: woven jacket with serendipituous Suri alpaca skein. (Two great finds - one not-so-great-photo.)

YO,YO,YO, XO XO XO!

2006-08-11T10:29:00.000-04:00

Look what came in the mail! From Sharon Miller's Heirloom Knitting shop in Devon, England, are two new lace patterns. I now officially have more lace patterns than I can knit in a long lifetime. Times two.

The Cameron, left, is definitely in the queue. I want to start it just as soon as I have (a) finished my current lace project, the MS2 (last clue out today); and (b) I have no other project rudely shoving it's way to the front of the line; and (c) I get up the nerve to handle the yarn.

Just look at this skinny stuff for the Cameron! Looks like it would come apart if you look at it cross-eyed. And judging by the complexity of the pattern, I expect to have a number of cross-eyed moments.

But that's no sweat compared with the Wedding Ring Shawl. Of course, it's named because you will be able to draw the six-foot square finished gossamer piece through your wedding ring. I only bought the pattern for the sheer (!) pleasure of looking at it, but I do hope to knit it one of these days when I am a lot better knitter. The yarn I'm dreaming about for the Wedding Ring is a gossamer silk. (I'm nuts to be even thinking about it. Stop, already!) It makes the Jamieson Cobweb Ultra for the Cameron look like rope. Sigh. Someday...

Do you think I could snap out of it? I really have to stop this obsession with lace knitting for a while and get on with knitting some practical, relatively speedy, down-to-earth sweaters. And socks. And other wintery things. It's just so hard to think about right now.

On the edge

2006-08-10T16:55:00.000-04:00

Here's the edging of the Lily of the Valley shawl (very roughly pinned out) I've been attempting. I like the color for this shawl, but I'm not so sure it's going to go much further.

Why?

Well, do you see those little bumps between the YO columns? They're called "nupps", I've discovered, and to make one, you have to do a knit-into-the-stitch/YO combination seven times, and then purl all seven of the little suckers into one stitch in the next row. 7. Into 1. Purling. It is, as the Yarn Harlot would say, a pain in the arse. A whole bunch of less polite phrases come to mind, too.

I've since removed the provisional cast-on (the blue) and worked a few rows the other direction. "Worked" is definitely the right word. I'm going to have to get a lot better at making those, er, nupps , or it's nuts on the nupps. This cone of Zephyr may be bound for another destiny.

New Family Member

2006-08-09T11:34:00.000-04:00

DH nearly ran over this little guy on a busy downtown street yesterday. He was covered with fleas and really, really hungry. He made a quick trip to the vet before he came home to live with us. DD named him Oliver.

He looks a little perturbed in this photo - that because he was becoming not so fond of getting his picture taken - again.

Welcome to our family, Oliver! The more, the merrier!

The Stash

2006-08-08T11:31:00.000-04:00

Since DD took over my office upstairs, I had to carve out another spot in the basement for fiber adventures. Formerly known as the "Freezer Room", this space is hereby dubbed "The Studio" (w/freezer).

The Stash is semi-neatly tucked into wine storage crates at the back of my sewing table. There's room on top for some magazine cases for all those back issues and catalogs, plus a Hanne Falkenburg sweater kit (I really have to get that OTN!), and some cones for lace knitting.

It still needs some serious tweaking (color arrangement, mainly), but I can again see all my yarn.

And here are the books. I used to have them arranged alphabetically by author, but it drove me nuts because I can't always remember my own phone number, let alone the author of that book with a pattern that think I remember, but I'm not sure was even in a book.

So now they are stuffed in the bookcase by these preliminary categories: Reference, General Patterns including Sweaters, Not (sweaters), Kids, Lace, Felting, Reads (knitting related literature), Other Than (weaving, crochet). None are arranged within categories (by title or author, or hats and then mittens and then socks), and they may never get more organized than that. I'd rather use the time knitting...

MS2 -Clue 4, and more

2006-08-02T10:17:00.000-04:00

It's yet another hasty, wonky shot, but at least I got a picture of the Mystery Stole progress up before the next clue is out on Friday. I admit it looks pretty dull and nasty in this shot, but it's very nice in person. I'll take some good shots at the end.

This is through clue 4. It clearly is barely even smoothed out, let alone stretched at this point. It measures about 18 inches wide and 50 inches long so far.

It has been an easy knit so far, but a little hard on the old eyes. I took a wise knitter's advice and put a white cloth behind it while I'm knitting. WOW - I'm astonished at what a difference that makes!

But...

I'm getting a bit weary of navy blue, so I've been thinking about starting a new project in this while I wait for Clue 5:

It's yet another cone of fabulous Zephyr (50/50 merino/silk). After Frost Flowers and Leaves, which took (according to the pattern) a whopping 3600 yards, you'd think I would want to knit with something else. The MS2 is a sensuous knit in Kidsilk Haze (70/30 mohair silk), but gimme Zephyr!

Yet another shawl? Yep. I think so. At 89 degrees this morning, you'd think the only cone I'd be looking at is one with some ice cream in it. I was planning to start something other than another lace shawl, but somehow I keep putting off knitting those wool sweaters right now.

Off to dig up a suitable pattern...

Mr. E

2006-07-29T06:20:00.000-04:00

Here's an update on Mr. E. A trip to the vet brought good news: blood tests confirmed that the new medicine is working well to contain his Cushing's Disease .

He's looking much better. Honestly! Check this out from a month ago.

The bad news: Now they tell us he also has Diabetes. In addition to two pills he must endure every morning, I must now give Mr. E an insulin shot. He doesn't mind the shot too much, but he is definitely less than thrilled with prescription cat food. Neither am I - it's expensive!

When Mr. E showed up on our doorstep about two months ago, he was a very sick kitty. In addition to (and because of) the Cushing's, he was ravenous, weak and shaky. He had blood in his urine, an eye infection, mange, a bloody and infected front paw, and weighed just over 5 pounds. A lot of his hair had fallen out. He could barely step into a litter box.

But he's a very happy cat these days. He's put on a little weight, some of his hair is growing back, his eye has improved, most of the infections are taken care of, and he has some spring in his step. He's even jumping onto DD's bed! He's getting lots of food and attention (to the dismay of the other cats). I think Mr. E is quite aware that without all the indignities, of the vet and the shots and the pills, he wouldn't be on the planet.

Mystery Stole, Clue 3

2006-07-28T10:03:00.000-04:00

Yikes! Time is flying! Clue 4 was posted this morning, (looking much like the last two). I hadn't even taken a picture of the MS2 with clue 3 finished yet, so here's another hasty photo taken this morning. I really like how it is turning out.

Melanie has done a wonderful job of designing this shawl, and I believe she could be elevated to sainthood for being the list mom...

From my grumpy self this morning: It seems that a lot of people who are absolute beginners at lace knitting signed up for this KAL project, and to be fair, many of them are cooking right along. First off, they are more brave than me - if I am going to learn a brand new technique, I usually like to see what I'm getting into first. Is it a gentle day hike, or is it Everest? I'm not too far from being a beginning lace knitter myself, and I appreciate the learning curve.

A few of these folks, however, are definitely not intrepid knitters, and the same questions, whining, wailing, and gnashing of teeth appear over and over and OVER again. Aaarrrgggghhhhh! It's gotten so that I seldom read the posts; I just log in and and get the clue. I love to share what I have learned so far to anyone who wants to know. It is an honor to give to someone else what I have received from other knitters: we preserve and enhance our craft. However, I also think folks need to read directions, look it up, and make some reasonable attempt to figure things out for themselves. If you can't knit two together and make a yarn over and no amount of list help seems to make you understand, FIND ANOTHER PROJECT, ALREADY!!

I'm just saying.

Stitch Markers

2006-07-27T22:11:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I bought three sets of great stitch markers from Beadmarkers. They are especially great for lace, because the rings don't distort the knitting, and they don't sneak under YO's.
Karen makes all kinds of different styles, and you'll find it's hard to choose. She ships quickly, too. Mine are mixed fimo sets, and I plan to order more. Here's a closer look at them:

Convergence Loot

2006-07-23T18:37:00.000-04:00

Well, it's about time I got around to showing this great haul! It's been weeks since I've returned from Covergence - a day trip to Grand Rapids with three great fellow guild members, Vicki, Suzanne and Birgit. I managed to walk miles to buy all this lovely stuff, despite the fact that I was still hobbling around in one of those fabulous orthopedic shoes (three weeks after foot surgery). I figured scotch and ice in the two obvious places would resolve any residual pain from all that hoofing. (I was right, too!)

I've already filed the the two pattenrs away, but here's the other loot.
From Lisa Souza's booth, from left:
Two skeins of merino sock yarn, the first color is "Mardi Gras" and the second is "Wild Things"; and
beautiful "Fatima", two skeins in "Oil Slick".
There is a shawl stick pin in there, too, from Lisa's booth.

From Habu, six tiny skeins of silk/mohair and a bag of gold cocoons for spinning. That shimmery gold is the natural color for those puppies! They probably won't get spun so soon, because I'm enjoying looking at them so much in their current state.

From Oak Grove Studio, a giant skein of boucle' for a sideways-knit sweater...

which is clearly Garbo's fave. It's going to be a cat bed if I don't stash it post-haste.

This is "Rick Rack II" from Interlacements, which - IMO - is gorgeous, and the only thing I bought without a potential project in mind. It's over 1400 yards - a cinch for yet another shawl. Like the cocoons, though, I'm getting a lot of pleasure in just looking at it, for now.

And the teeny skein below is 20/2 silk, 450 yards, from Redfish, which is slated for a smoke ring.

Quite a haul, dont you think? Cranking up the needles...

Mystery Stole progress

2006-07-21T11:56:00.000-04:00

Before I get into clue three of the Mystery Stole, which was posted this morning - I thought I'd share how clues one and two came out for me. This shawl is knit from the middle out - clue one back to back with a provisional cast-on down the middle, and then clue two added to the ends of clue one, and so forth.

This isn't stretched or even smoothed out - just flung on the kitchen floor for a quick shot.

Most people are using Zephyr or Knit Picks lace weight yarn. I'm using Kidsilk Haze in the color "Night" (a deep navy) on 4's . A fool rushes in! Just writing about almost-black mohair and lace in the same sentence ought to have me hollering for smelling salts, or maybe a scotch. Also, my stole is coming out GIGANTIC compared to the MS2 shawls of two friends, whose versions I got to take a peek at during Monday's knitting get-together. It feels big and lumbering and gangly next to its two dainty cousins. I *think* I really like it very much, though, but I suppose I won't know for sure until after the blocking.

I have the impression from the MS2 group site that there will be no edging on this stole, but I think that if I have yarn enough, and I'm not sick-sick-sick of it by the time I get that far, that I'll add a small edging to it. It might need a little something.

This shawl is one I'd knit again. Eventually. After the fifty others waiting in the queue!

Also, Mr. E, our new cat with Cushing's disease, is getting stronger. He's jumping on and off of DD's bed, which would have been impossible two weeks ago - he could hardly stand up then. Plus, he's growing a little hair on his face, so he looks more like a cat and less like a monkey. He's really a very handsome guy. New pictures soon.

Hat trick!

2006-07-20T23:05:00.000-04:00

Dear Daughter was a few rows into the brim of her new felted hat pattern when we went to a gathering of knitters yesterday. Well, she hasn't stopped since! She knit and knit today, learning how to make one, ssk, and use doublepoints in the process. How far did she get?

Look at this!

The entire hat, unfelted!

She used Plymouth Galway (Fiber Trends pattern), with some eyelash trim for the hatband.

Was it enough that she knitted nearly the entire hat in one day?

Nope.
She also felted it, another skill she learned today. I'm so proud of her!

Now she's casting on for matching fingerless mittens...

I also scored big at the knitting gathering of friends yesterday. I had long admired the work of Birgit, a wonderous knitter, spinner and teacher in our community.

I had also long regretted not buying a hat and scarf set that Birgit had made for sale. "I'm a knitter", I thought to myself. "I should be able to make a set of my own pretty much like that ." Months went by, and I kept thinking about that set.

It began to dawn on me that it's perfectly okay to buy the work of another artist, even though one dabbles in paint oneself. Lesson learned.

Then recently I found out that Birgit's beautiful set was still for sale! Lucky me - something that I long admired and missed was meant to be mine after all! Hats off to you, Birgit, and thank you.

It's a(nother) wrap!

2006-07-09T12:29:00.000-04:00

It's been quite a while since I last jotted something down - where has the time gone?!?

Well, here: We have somethat unexpectedly acquired a wonderful new foster daughter, and she has required lots of TLC during the past two weeks.

Here she is with the newly blocked and named-by-me "Healdsburg" shawl, which is the "Diamond Fantasy" pattern by Sivia Harding.
I began it on June 17, but had only little snatches of time for knitting.

It's made from a two-ply merino/silk blend spun my moi on Inez (my Lendrum).

Here's a close-up of the pattern.

Mr. E's diagnosis of Cushing's Disease was confirmed on Thursday. The disease is very, very rare in cats, and they had to do a lot of testing to make sure. We are told it is treatable. He seems to be quickly improving with the new medication, which we began on Friday. He doesn't look so good yet (blame part of this on the lousy shot because camera batteries were fading), but his energy is returning. Plus, some of his hair is beginning to grow back - peach-fuzz, but I'm sure he is feeling a bit more handsome.
He's a very cool cat, patient, tolerant, and a fighter.

I need to take pics of Convergence spoils to share, too.

Busy, busy, busy

2006-06-29T19:13:00.000-04:00

Getting ready for the Mystery Shawl 2 to start. Hmmm. which yarns? Kidsilk Haze or Zephyr?
Will need to make up my mind soon, because the first clue comes out on July 7.
You can join here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Mystery_Stole_2/

I love the mailman...

2006-06-22T10:08:00.000-04:00

...and I love the UPS guy, too! Look what I got in the mail yesterday, clockwise from top:
Gloria Penning's Old World Treasures, a collection of beautiful lace cloth;
Valley Yarns burgundy 2/14 alpaca silk, 1736 yards, which is a half a pound, from WEBS;
Beaded stitch markers (18 of them);
Dark teal laceweight wool (2550 yards) from handpaintedyarn.com
I know, I know, I ordered and paid for this stuff, so I know it's a bit daft to feel as though I got an unexpected present. But in the face of Mr. E's plight, this is all a very welcome diversion indeed.

Mr. E Update

2006-06-21T23:34:00.000-04:00

They think they might have a name for what's ailing Mr. E - besides looking worse, if possible, from today's visit to the vet.

It's Cushing's Disease (or Syndrome). Apparently quite rare in cats, it is the effect of malfunctioning pituitary or adrenal glands. They tell us it is treatable, although a preliminary online search tells us that the prognosis is not so great - provided the animal survives surgery to remove any tumors. Treatment is going to be tricky. And expensive.

The vet took a skin biopsy, pulled a bunch of loose teeth, shaved off a lot of Mr. E's remaining hair, and sent Mr. E home with even more medication.

We are going to do our best for you, Mr. E.

Leftovers?!?

2006-06-19T10:19:00.000-04:00

Having bought a whole pound of Zephyr for the Frost Flowers and Leaves shawl (elswhere on this blog), I was planning on enough left over for another shawl.

Leftovers? Zephyr (50/50merino/silk) is a leftover like filet mignon is a leftover!

It was a marathon job, but I finally got the rest of the cone wound onto a niddy. This is a 2-yard niddy, meaning that one pass around all four corners equals 2 yards.

I have 2125 yards, all ready for the dye pot!

What color? What color?

The Wee Knitting Muse will help, I hope. I'll just have to wait until she gets around to it...

A tadpole from the Frog Pond

2006-06-18T17:52:00.000-04:00

I won some new lace patterns on eBay yesterday - Yaaay! Before I elope with the next pattern that shows up in my mailbox, I thought I'd better be true to some projects already started/spoken for. I spied the purple merino/silk I spun a few months ago that had a false start as a Fir Cone shawl. When I started it, I chose Fir Cone because I wanted a very simple motif that would not overwhelm my humble handspun. Plus, I'ts a no-brainer to figure out the increases on a triangle shawl with Fir Cone. Easy pickin's right?

Well, not so fast. I wasn't too sure after I'd knitted a few repeats whether I really liked the fabric. Did I listen to the Wee Knitting Muse whacking me up side the head? Of course not. I kept plugging away....

I had knitted nearly the entire shawl when I decided that the fabric was just too dense, and that the yarn wanted to be something airier. So... a-waltzing to the frog pond I went. My big ball of reclaimed yarn sat on my dresser until this weekend, when thumbing through my pattern binders, I fell upon the Diamond Fantasy shawl!

Eureka!! Yarn and pattern entered my head at the same time and the Wee Knitting Muse sang in my ear (she's fickle, though - so I'm hoping she doesn't box my ears again when I'm nearly through). What's more, I'm following a pattern, which means the increases are already figured out for me. I love charts done by somebody else.

This pattern is airy, but not intricate, and I have enough yardage to make a full-size shawl. So last night, I cast on and proceeded. The picture shows the first few repeats.

Hoping

2006-06-16T10:14:00.000-04:00

It was crushing to find that the vet is no longer so optimistic about Mr. E. He thinks MR. E has some other major problem, but couldn't answer what it is. Mr. E will make a return trip to the vet next week providing he survives, when Dr. L will take another stab at seeing why this kitty is so ill. Meanwhile, he sent me home with eye ointment, a topical anti-fungal, another medication to help process food, more antibiotics, and instructions to routinely flush out a newly discovered wound on Mr. E's paw. Hoping for the best....

Mr.E

2006-06-13T14:42:00.000-04:00

Posting has been a bit slow (already!) because we have a new member of the family who is demanding a lot of attention.

Mr. E showed up in our back yard last week, starving, shaky, and frightfully skinny. He fled when he saw us, but the prospect of food soon overwhelmed him.

Finally, we were able to gently bring him in. We took him to the veteranerian right away, although we feared that we were too late to save Mr. E.

Mr. E is a cat with a large frame, but he only weighed 5 pounds. But believe it or not, the vet gave us encouraging news.

Mr. E has an internal infection and bad teeth in addition to the obvious starvation and skin issues, but has no other apparent major health problems. We'll know more when the doctor looks a little further during his next examination.

Mr. E is quarantined in our basement sewing room for now, which he clearly dislikes. We have other cats, but Mr. E isn't healthy enough to join the rest of the population yet.

He has been devouring about a pound of high-calorie food a day. If my math is correct, it is the equivalent of a human eating about 25 pounds of food per day.
It's working - he's gained a whole pound! (Dontcha wish you could eat 25 pounds of cake a day only gain a pound a week?)

We have an appointment tomorrow, and we hope we will be able to report good progress for Mr. E. And maybe we'll be able to knit some, too.

Where there's a lap...

2006-06-06T09:15:00.000-04:00

There's a cat!

...that would be Hizzoner, Mr. Dylan.

It's a Wrap!

2006-06-02T21:57:00.000-04:00

Here's my glamour shot for the Frost Flowers and Leaves shawl. It feels as soft and luxurious as it looks, and I'm proud of it.

I've loved working on this one, and I learned a lot, too (see some posts below).

Frost Flowers and Leaves

2006-06-01T22:50:00.000-04:00

Yaaaaaay! It's done. (Pic here added later.)

I just finished the Frost Flowers and Leaves shawl on Sunday. It's blocked and drying in the basement at this very moment. The pattern, by Eugen Beugler, is published in A Gathering of Lace by Meg Swansen. See a picture of it from the book on the Frost Flowers and Leaves KAL .

Here's a beginning picture taken on April 2.

The center of the shawl is on size 3.5 mm dpn's, 5-1/2 inches long. I believe this picture is taken when I was through row 38, or at the end of the first part of the first chart.

You can tell that I was about ready to switch to circulars, though I putzed along on the dpn's for another ten rows or so until I was sure I had enough to go around.

By the way, I've unvented a way of making that first all-thumbs Emily Ocker circular cast-on a little easier. Well, really, it isn't the actual cast-on, it's managing the dpn's after the cast-on. Look for more in the next day or two, along with some more pictures of progress and some of the things I've learned so far about knitting lace in general.

I've been keeping stats on this shawl, partly to urge myself on, and partly to confirm for myself and others that this was not a small undertaking.

To wit:

This shawl is 6 feet square by the book, except that mine is a bit smaller (5'4") because I knitted it with size 4's (3.50 mm) instead of the recommended size 6 (4.25 mm) needles. But every one of those wee stitches in the pattern were knitted!
This is lace knitting (as opposed to knitted lace, according to some experts), with pattern stitches on both sides.
The pattern calls for 3600 yards - or a little over 2 miles - of yarn. I'm using Zephyr, 50/50 silk and merino, 30wpi. Color is "Mushroom".
The pattern begins with 8 stitches. The final row before the edging has 1388 stitches for one round. Yikes!
There are 134,784 stitches in the shawl before the edging.
There are 192 stitches in the edging for each 10 bound-off stitches of shawl, making the edging another 26,650 stitches...
...for a grand total of 161,250 for the entire shebang (not counting frogging and tinking, another significant number!)
It has taken a solid eight weeks to knit.

it's freshly off the needles and unblocked -just plunked down on the kitchen floor so I could snap a picture. After dragging it around for eight weeks, it could stand up by itself, so I'm not concerned about it getting dirty by being tossed onto my less-than- pristine floor. Those are foot-square tiles, so you can see that unblocked, it's just about 3-1/2 feet or so square.

Now, isn't that better? It's been washed in Eucalan and has been blocked on an old (vacuumed, no less!) rug in the basement.

I used blocking wires on the shawl body, and I used a cotton crochet yarn around the perimeter of the narrow edge, pinning with wild abandon after I stretched the shawl to it's beautiful dimension of 64 inches square.

I had threaded the cotton crochet yarn through the perimeter before washing it because I had intended to try the "Russian" (aka "string") method of blocking. Turns out I would have needed to round up three more people (one for each corner) to help stretch the shawl. My impatience got the better of me though, and considering I would have felt obligated to mop that kitchen floor to invite that many people over, I just proceeded on.

I didn't do a wonderful job of blocking, anyhow - I had foot surgery recently, and crawling around on the floor for three hours wasn't a very smart move. But I really couldn't wait to see how it came out! I can always dress it again later. Meanwhile, I am content that nothing has unraveled, and it looks pretty good from here.

I'll take a glamour shot later in the week so you can see it in it's full glory. In the meantime, you can see the things that helped, or didn't, in making this shawl.

Knit on.

A FF&L Lace Primer, Part 1

2006-05-31T23:45:00.000-04:00

A bit of what I learned while knitting

Frost Flowers and Leaves,

a shawl pattern by

Eugen Beugler, published in

A Gathering of Lace by Meg Swansen.

Before you start Frost Flowers and Leaves, check that you have the errata for this pattern.

You can also join a KAL for this shawl, if you like. These knitters mostly began in November 2005, but there have been quite a few recent joiners. The also have a file section for errata, a triangular version, and a spreadsheet on stitch counts. If you like the company, this might be for you.

I worked myself into a tizzy about needles, thinking I had to have special points for lace. I bought several types - Bryspun, with beautiful tips but really lousy joins, and Baylenes, which were serviceable enough - but not slick enough for me. Well, what I needed was to just get used to manipulating really, really skinny yarn. When I got past the dpn stage, I found that my good old Addi turbos, blunt tips and all, worked just fine.

I did blow up the chart. No! Not literally! Though I sure felt like it several times during the process of knitting this one. I know they've warned me that they'll throw me in irons for making a photocopy, but I wasn't stealing the pattern. The person at Kinko's did give DH a bad time. But thanks to DH's charm, Kinko's enlarged it, and I got a chart I could actually read. Plus, I don't have to mess up the book.

One of my big discoveries during the course of knitting this shawl is highlighter tape. I won't knit without it when I need to closely follow a pattern, ever again.

This stuff makes it simple to mark rows; it stays stick enough to move it a bunch of times, and it's a cinch to read through to the row(s) below.

Circular Cast-on for Frost Flowers and Leaves, and other lace

To start, you'll need to know how to do a circular cast-on. And you'll find that this beginning, with its first few rows, is not so easy to do - no matter how many socks you've already knit on dpn's. You will have eight stitches on four dpn's, and knit friends, it is a pretty good challenge. It gets easier, though - much easier, after a few rounds. Hang in there.

There are two methods rather vaguely (IMO) described in the book. I found a great site with the best pictures here for Emily Ocker's circular cast-on.

Casting-on Hint 1: Here's what I unvented to solve all the fumbling during those first few rounds.

After making the cast-on ring of stitches, I arrange them on three dpn's using a needle size several sizes smaller than the size I would be using for the shawl. To begin an eight-stitch round, I place 2 stitches on the first needle, 4 on the second, and 2 on the third. I knitted my FF&L with a size four needle, so I began with size 2 dpn's. Now it's easy to see what order the needles need to be in in order to join the first round, and harder to accidentally twist the stitches. I also know, without a marker to further confuse things at this awkward stage, that the beginning of the row is between the two dpn's that have the two stitches on them, so my brain can simply fuss with essential motor skills now. I join and knit the first round.
At the beginning of the second round, I begin using the next dpn size up, exchanging each needle for the next larger size as I come to it. Each needle still has a unique feature, so it's easy to tell what's next. For example, after knitting one needle in the round, needle 1 is a larger size dpn, needle 2 has more stitches on it, and needle 3 is still the smaller size needle.
At the beginning of the third round, I begin exchanging each dpn for the next larger size as I did in round 2. By the end of this round, all the dpn's will be the "working" needle size. I work another round or two with 3 needles holding the stitches, and then divide them to the proper 4 dpn's. By this time, things are much more solid on the needles, and I proceed as usual from there.

The difference in stitch size is not really obvious, but those center stitches look beautifully shaped and balanced. Like a lot of knitting instructions, it reads as though it's complicated, but it's really simple when put into action. If this way didn't improve the appearance of the center of the shawl, I would call it a cheat. But even if I could manage all those sticks with utmost grace and finesse during the beginning, I'd still do it my way just for the improved looks.

Casting on Hint 2: Place the work on a pillow, and rotate the pillow, not the dpn's. And use wood (or plastic, but not metal) needles to help reduce the slip.

Casting on Hint 3: If those first yarn-overs at the beginning of the row are making you nuts, skip them and pick them up on the following row.

Casting on hint 4: If you just can't do the circular cast-on, or hate-hate-hate it, do what a couple of my knit pals did: chain eight small stitches, stick 'em on dpn's, join, and go from there.

Getting to the knitty-gritty (sorry)

Gritty hint 1: This pattern got a lot easier for me with each successive chart - especially after the first break in chart one. And remember that you need to move your marker(s) on the arrow rows. The marker is moved at the beginning of each of the corners - knit to marker, remove marker, knit one, replace marker. (See page 3 of the book.)

Gritty hint 2: Learn to correct mistakes in sections, not by frogging or ripping back. Yes you can! Uh-huh, yes you can! Yep, I know, it does look impossible, especially when you're pretty new to lace knitting.. When you're on row 160 and there are 1216 stitches per row, and the mistake is 4 or 9 or 14 rows back, oh, yes you can!

I thought you'd need some kind of knitting high-hooey degree to do this in rather complex knitting, but it isn't so. Here's the trick: Isolate a whole section, if you must, so you can tell exactly where you are through all those yarn-overs and decreases. You gotta know where you are to tell where you're going! Those lattices might drive you nuts if you don't learn how to do this.

Here's how:

There's a mistake in the lattice work below where I've isolated the 4-stitch repeat on a dpn.

Get the rest of the stitches out of the way - pull your circulars through to the cord, and use point protectors. The Belt and Suspenders plan is a good one here. (The rest of the lattice is correct, just looks a little wonky in the photo...)

I frogged back to a row or two above the mistake, and then tinked down below it. I've counted several times to make sure I know which row I'm on.

I've marked the chart at my new beginning spot, and am following it meticulously, even though I know it by heart.

Be sure to knit each ladder in order as it appears from right-hand side of the knitting.

Be gentle and take care not to stretch the ladders, using a crochet hook, if necessary. If you have too much ladder, gently work the stitches so that they take up the slack as evenly as you can.

If you have too little ladder, consider omitting any yarn-overs in that row and picking them up on the next row (by scooping them up when it's time to knit them.)

Done.

This probably took fifteen minutes instead of fifteen hours.

To be continued...

(see the completed shawl here)

A FF&L Lace Primer, Part II

2006-05-31T00:20:00.000-04:00

A bit more of what I learned on this project:
(Note: I'm publishing this out of order - it was actually completed after Part 1 - so that all the FF&L items are neighboring each other in some semblance of order...)

Gritty Hint 3: If you haven't used that yarn with those needles before, please consider making a swatch to make sure you like the fabric you're producing. "Lace weight" seems to be all over the place, from gossamer to cobweb and on up. There are a lot of hours invested on this thing - so from a generally-non-swatcher to another, I'm glad I did - I went down two needle sizes.

Gritty hint 4: I used orthodontic rubber bands as stitch markers. The bitty rubber bands don't take up so much room that they distort the knitting. Yep, they occasionally do slip around yarn-overs (as do other kinds), so keep your wits about you.

I know wise knitters who make their own markers from small bits of crochet cotton, leaving long tails so you can can weave them into the knitting as you go. I couldn't make it work well for me, though. I spent too much time tending tails.

Gritty hint 5: Pretty soon, all those markers just got in the way and slowed me down. I removed them all except the one marking the change from frost flowers to leaves near the end of the row, and also the end-of-round marker. At first, it feels sort of like a Flying Wallenda might feel without a net. But soon, it's wonderful. Put another way, now you can feel the full music and the rhythm of the pattern. You're singing a song instead of a bunch of phrases.

Gritty hint 6: I just did away with lifelines altogether. They were a pain in the butt, and it was more difficult to knit the next row than without it. Besides, I was using the skinniest dental floss I could find, having made a special trip to get it, too. (I prefer a different kind for my mouth.) I bought mint-flavored by mistake. Yuck! I wonder if the smell of mint is as unpleasant on wool/silk to potential wool/silk munching critters as it was to me. I was glad when I finally got to dunk that shawl in a bath.

Gritty hint 7: Watch for that moving row marker in FF&L. Though they tell you about it elsewhere in the book (page 3), the techniques are not all in the same spot. Here's what you do: Knit up to the marker. Remove the marker. Knit one stitch. Replace the marker. Continue on and do it again, natch, for each corner where you repeat that line of the chart from the beginning again.

Gritty hint 8: When you think you did all seven repeats in chart 2, check the stitch count. You should have 1388 stitches in the round (or 347 per side). I didn't, and couldn't believe I had to knit the damn chart again, one more time.

Gritty hint 9: When the book tells you to cast on the edge stitches, it's time to read Robert Powell's essay regarding edge grafting first. It's in the Gallery section of A Gathering of Lace, beginning on on page 159, in a section unrelated to FF&L.

To paraphrase it: Knit an entire pattern repeat of the edging before you begin attaching it to the shawl. Use a contrasting color to knit the first "live" row at the beginning of the second pattern repeat, attaching the edging to the shawl as indicated. Change to the main color at the beginning of the second row. Knit on and on and on......through the last row of edging. When it comes time for the grafting, you graft the end stitches to the beginning stitches using the contrasting color already knitted there as a path, removing the contrast thread after you have duplicated the path with the main color.

Otherwise, you'll have to do what I did and graft the end edge stitches to the beginning by the seat of your pants.

Let me say that feel a little snippy toward the book publisher for not indicating on the pattern that there was some provisional knitting recommended before I knit twenty-two feet of edging. Yes, I read the book from cover to cover when it came out. That was in 2000, when I had been knitting for a minute and only dreamed I might try to knit lace some day. I stuck a bookmark in the FF&L page at the time, and knit other stuff over the next six years. But I digress...

Gritty hint 10: An easy way to keep track of the edge stitches is to count ten stitches down the road on the circular and place a safety pin there. When you've completed one edging repeat, you will have used them all up, and you can move the safety pin after the next ten. Just remember that stitches 3-and-4 and 7-and-8 each count as one.

Gritty hint 11: If you missed number 9 before you cast on and knitted the edge, here's how I did it:I knitted a mock-up out of different yarn (bigger than lace weight,you betcha!), using a contrast color for the row that I wanted to graft. Then I followed the path of the contrast yarn in the mock-up for the real thing. Still took some concentration, but it worked just fine. MY! Those are some interesting colors...

The second photo shows the stitches pinned to the pillow so I could be sure to follow the path correctly.

Got any more? Email me, and I'll consolidate any new hints into another post.

I know these two posts are a bit elementary, especially for experienced knitters. I think some of esteemed expert knitters were born knowing this stuff! This project, like all the others I've ever done, taught me something -and if I'm lucky, I'll learn a lot of things. Otherwise, IMO, there wouldn't be much fun in it.

Maiden Voyage

2006-05-30T15:05:00.000-04:00

I finally decided to follow my friends into Blogworld. Knitting is my true passion, with spinning running a close second - and the wheel is rapidly gaining on the sticks.

I'm glad for a spot which lets me share the fabulous vistas I've discovered along this road of fiber exploration, as well as pointing out some of the potholes. Another good reason is that I don't have to be as polite here as I do on the groups and KALs. But I'll be nice - for now.

I've been knitting for six years. Six years ago, my sister was pregnant with twins. I decided to learn to knit during her eighth month. Knitter's magazine featured Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Surprise jacket at that time. I was working out of town for a month, so I bought the magazine, downloaded instructions on how to knit from the internet, and overnighted some yarn and needles from Patternworks to my hotel. I left with two baby jackets just as the twins were born. I've been knitting ever since.

Can I lay my hands on those pictures of the newborns in their novice baby jackets now? Of course not!!

But I came across this picture of the twins wearing hat and gloves knitted by moi. They were knitted when the boys were eighteen months old. Must have been a bit big for them at the time - they were five when this was taken!

I believe the hat is a Jill Eaton design called Firecracker. I don't have any idea about the mittens. I'm just amazed that there are still four of them.

Oh - the handsome guy in the middle? The Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom. I had to ask, too. But then, I don't live in SF at the moment - I only wish I did.

Knit on.