Wee Aran FO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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).