day dreaming

Moving is hard!  I'm sorry to say that moving has disrupted my sewing and knitting life more than having a baby did.  What does that say about me?  Or moving?

We've been in the new house for ten days, and I just put my sewing machine back on its desk this evening.  I've unpacked some of my yarn, but not all.  I've had a few internal temper tantrums over all the things I don't have time to be making.

Photo from the olden days before the move.

I have, though, been plodding away on my beautiful Girasole.  I'm about three-quarters of the way through the edging, and I'm worried it's going to be too small.  I'll block the daylights out of it, so I know it will grow, but I'm still a little discouraged.  When you only have time for one project, you want it to be kind of perfect. 

In the meantime, I keep seeing all these amazing garments and projects in the blogosphere!  And have you seen this amazing men's collection from the incomaprable Brooklyn Tweed?

Source

Since my knitting and sewing dreams are already exponentially greater than my knitting and sewing reality, I might as well dream of knitting a sweater that requires 1600 yards of worsted weight wool.  Can you imagine?  But oh, how amazing!  When we retire, honey!

Whew.

Packing + baby + packing + wrapping up work + packing + new house uncertainties + packing = headache. 

We're all a little on edge around here.  Poor Little A is being a trooper, but little things are setting her off into fits of tears, which is very unlike her.  Today when I picked her up from day care, she burst into tears because I hadn't brought her string cheese which she'd started eating at breakfast and had apparently left in Daddy's car.  She was looking forward to that string cheese all day, and when I showed up string cheese-less, it was more than she could take.  It's sad and sweet all at the same time. 

Thank goodness for beautiful yarn and an easy but non-boring pattern! 

This is Pink Label lace weight in colorway Moonmist from the Year in Colour Club, knit into a Fairy Mist.  I'm anxious to finish this project, but only because I'm going to keep knitting with the yarn!  I bought an extra skein so I can make an ethereal Girasole.  The colors are so dreamy and moon shiney, and not in the home brewed liquor kind of way.  Seriously, knitting is reducing my blood pressure and replacing the years to my life which moving is threatening to take away. 

In two weeks, we'll be in a new house in a new town, and I'll have a magical, airy cowl around my neck.  Ahhh. 

magic + wool + calm quiet + beauty + tiny bit of math = knitting

Mr. Postman, bring me some yarn ...

In terms of yarn in the mail, it was a banner week!  Webs has been having their annual sale, I treated myself to a special Mother's Day yarn present, and, most excitingly, the May installment of the Tanis Fiber Arts Year in Colour Club arrived! 

This is the pink lable, 100% merino laceweight.  There are 1000 yards in this one skein!  I love it.  This colorway is called Moonmist.

Swatch on size 2 on left, swatch on size 3 on right

I'm having a hard time deciding on the needle size, even though I knit a couple good swatches.  The problem is that I blocked the smaller swatch more aggressively, so I actually got the same gauge on both size 2 and size 3 needles.  That was dumb.  I think I'm going to go with the 2s and not block so aggressively with the FO. 

I am so loving this club.  I'm not sure I would have picked either this color or this pattern on my own, but I love this process of trying something new.  I pretty much love all Tanis' colorways, so I feel comfortable trusting the mystery and surprise. 

There are a lot of changes approaching rapidly in our family, so it's great to have a big lacy project into which to escape!  More about those changes soon ...

What's wrong with this picture?

At least the stripes match, right?  This is what happens when you try to cut something out in a hurry because you only have 45 minutes during the little ones' nap time.

Amazingly, I had one section of scraps that was just big enough.

Also amazingly, the stripes almost match!  These pieces are on their way to becoming a McCalls 6073. 

So crafting moms pay $9 for buttons and cut out two left fronts.  What else do crafting moms do?

I'm still here!

There's something about having a baby that makes me want to go outside a couple times a week and shout, "I'm still here!"  And then there are other times when I'm glad that having a new baby means I can hunker down at home and not have to worry about my normal responsibilities, and just take care of Baby O.  My knitting and sewing have fallen right between these two poles.  My knitting and sewing are still happening ("I'm still here!"), but at a slower rate (just hunkering down). 

So here's what's slowly creeping off the needles:

This is the Windsor Cardi, which I started before Baby O was born.  I started the sleeves a week or two after he was born, and I slowly started to hate the sweater, mostly because I thought it would never be done.  Now that it looks like I might not actually be working on it during the little one's high school graduation, I think I like it. 

Yesterday I took the little one out and we bought buttons.  We bought them quickly, because he started crying ferociously not long after we got there.  The thing is, Joann's only had six buttons, and I needed eight.  These were perfect buttons, so I arranged for an interstore transfer, which meant I have to pay $7 shipping on $2 buttons.  And I had to give them my address while holding a screaming, angry infant.  While shouting over his crying, I thought, This is what it means to be a knitting mom.  You pay $9 for two buttons because you have 3 minutes to finish this project, and if you don't fork over the money, you won't get your sweater finished.  I want it finished, so whatever about the money.  This sweater will be done soon!

I also started a Brynna, a sweater that I see ads for all over Ravelry.  I really like Bonne Marie Burns' patterns, and I'm thinking of knitting another Cinnie for the summer also.  You know, with all the extra knitting time I've got piling up.

I have fabric to make another McCalls 6073, but that hasn't happened yet.  Maybe tomorrow. 

Progress

I have a long list of things I want to sew and knit before the baby comes (in just over six weeks!).  I've been very methodical about these things.  Things like getting out the car seat and cleaning the bassinette and washing all the newborn onesies?  Yeah, not yet.  Sewing not one, but two dresses and knitting not one, but two cardigans for the big-sister-to-be?  All over it.  Hmm. 

bag beginnings

I've started a new project!  I'm going to make a diaper bag using Joel Dewberry's newest line, Notting Hill.

After scouring the internet for the perfect diaper bag pattern, I settled on a Joel Dewberry pattern, too: the Pockets Aplenty Diaper Bag.  It's not exactly perfect.  I wanted something a little bigger and with more inside pockets.  But this one looks really good and I'm sure it will work.


I've never made a bag before, and it's a little intimidating.  I completely love this fabric, though, and the satisfaction of carrying something I love every day is plenty of motivation to make me face the challenge! 

Ugly baby blanket

This blanket is not working.  I was in denial for a few days, but I've accepted it.  It's just ugly.

I haven't completely given up on the pattern.  I think the problem is my color choice.  So I'm going to rip it out and switch out some colors.  I think I'll get rid of the green and yellow, and swap in white and coral.

Blah.  I hate when things don't work out as planned.  I'll concede poor color choices, but I'm not going to give up yet! 

sloggggggg

When I was 25, I hiked Half Dome in Yosemite with a friend.  He was on a crusade to make the hike 50 times before his 50th birthday, and he always needed willing hiking companions.  My sister and my dad had both done it, so I signed up, too.

Unless you are crazy wilderness survival person, the hike is pretty intense.  It's 16 miles round trip, and you gain almost a mile in elevation.  And here's the crazy part: the last 500 feet or so are straight up the back of the granite dome, with iron hand cables and wood planks bolted to the rock for foot holds.

The hike was pretty gruelling on the way up, but it was during those last 500 feet when I suddenly realized that my life, my actual life, depended on the strength in my arms.  This is when I realized that I am a regular person who enjoys walks in the outdoors, not crazy wilderness survival person.  But what was I going to do?  I kept going, did not under any circumstances look around and definitely not down, and told myself my arms were in great shape.

We had lunch at the top, and then headed back down for an eight mile hike home.  After going down a lot, the last two miles are nice and flat, but they're also very sandy.  FYI, hiking in sand after your muscles already feel like rubber bands is not enjoyable.  I think the 15 miles I'd already hiked, the mile up and down I'd gone, and the fact that I'd confronted death really hit me during this sandy stretch, and I knew there was no way I was going to make it.  My friend was going to have to call Yosemite search and rescue, and I'd be on the news, and I might never see my mother again.  Why had I done this to myself?  What was I trying to prove?  I lost all sense of decorum, and my friend, who had done this about 47 times already, was getting a little impatient with me, and I'm sure my hysterics weren't helping.

I did make it, without calling search and rescue, but the slog through that flat, sandy part remains in my memory as bad as clinging to the side of a granite mountain a mile in the air.

Something about my current knitting project reminds me of that sandy two mile stretch.

I'm over the fun part, I'm done with the tricky part, and now it just feels the garter stitch will never end.

Good as new!

After a very simple and enjoyable ripping, winding, washing and hanging, here is the yarn from my Wood Hollow Vest, all ready to be wound into cakes and cast on!

Just a few hands on minutes, plus two days of drying time took this:

to this:

Isn't wool amazing?  I love it.

I'm all ready to cast on!  Bring on the opening ceremonies!

Reclaiming yarn: Easier than it looks!

Have you ever put something off because you thought it would (a) take forever, or (b) be really difficult, or (c) both?  And then finally talked yourself into finishing the task and found that it was (d) no big deal at all?  That was me and frogging this vest.  I've been thinking about that thing for two years.  Two years, people!  And the whole thing took about half an hour, and was really pretty fun.  Two years of thinking about something that took 30 minutes.  Why do we do that to ourselves?

Here's what I did.

I used a yarn swift to hold the yarn and wind it into a hank.  I pulled about 3 yards off the sweater, then wound it on to the hank.  Trying to wind it directly from the sweater would make the yarn too taut, and would also be very fiddly. 

If you don't have a yarn swift, you can use the back of a chair.  Just make sure that the sides of the back of the chair are parallel, or angled in towards each other.  If the sides are angled away from each other, if the chair back gets wider as it goes up, it will be nearly impossible to remove the yarn after you've wound hundreds of yards.  I know of which I speak. 

When I'd wound about 100 grams (about two balls of the Wool of the Andes), I tied it up in four places using some scrap cotton yarn.  I'd just started a fifth ball of this yarn, so I wound the sweater into two hanks.  

You sort of make a figure 8 with the cotton through the yarn.  Well, a figure 8 with another loop on top.  So really, more of a figure snowman. 

Look how crinkly the yarn is!  You can't knit with that!  Not without driving yourself mad. 

It does look sort of awesome though, doesn't it?

 

To get all the crinkle out, you have to wash it.  Washing unknit yarn sounded like a scary prospect to me--oh! the tangles!--but since I'd tied it well, it was not a crisis.  It was as easy as washing a sweater.

After squeezing--not wringing!-- the yarn and wrapping it up in a towel and stepping on it, I hung it to dry, using a couple of skirts on hangers as weights to pull out the crimping.  I think I'll wear the vest with this khaki skirt this fall!  Ooh, with boots and tights.  And the sky will be blue and the leaves will be beautiful and it will be a delicious 55 degrees and not 194 and sticky and terrible like it is now. 

I let it hang about 24 hours, rotating the hank so it dried evenly and didn't get re-crimped from the two hangers.  Then I let the hank rest on my ironing board for another day or so to rest.  The yarn really plumped up again, and looks like no one ever even thought about knitting a gigantic sweater with it. 

I'll show you the finished hanks tomorrow! 

Because of my recent discovery that (a) I am tall and need to lengthen sweaters, and (b) I therefore need to buy more yarn than a pattern calls for, I am finding myself up knitting creek without enough yarn for my current WIP. 

I'm making Aidez with Cascade Eco Wool, just to be completely original.  These are monster skeins--250 grams and 487 yards.  My ball winder shuddered in fear at just the thought of balling those puppies up.  I had two skeins in my stash that I bought last year before the price of wool increased.  Most people on Ravelry were able to finish their sweaters with just two skeins, so I started the sweater with confidence that I would be fine. 

I scoured Ravelry for people making the same size (44") with the same needle size (9), and it looks like most people still used just two skeins.  But I decided to add an extra inch to the body length, and I started to get nervous.  The first skein got me through the back and the left front, except the last two inches.  So I started looking around for a third skein.

This must be the smallest dye lot in the history of yarn.  I could only find one person on Rav with the same dye lot, and hers wasn't for sale.  I did find the same shade, although different dye lot, at a local-ish yarn store, and I figured that was as close as I was going to get.  The new skein is very, very close to my old skeins.  But what's the old saying?  Close only counts in hand grenades and horseshoes?  (Wow, what a lovely saying.) 

I swatched the two together, and the difference is detectable.  How detectable to people other than me, I don't know.  I don't think it's so bad where I alternated every two rows.  Can you see a difference? 

The stripes are more visible on the bottom of the swatch, where I alternated every 8 rows. 

Alternating every two rows.

The new one isn't as brown as the old one.  I have just the two sleeves left to do.  What approach should I take? 

1. Knit one sleeve from the remaining skein, then knit the second sleeve from the new skein.
2. Knit both sleeves from the new skein.
3. Knit both cuffs from the new skein and the sleeves from the old skein, hoping the old skein holds out for both sleeves.
4. Knit both sleeves with both skeins, alternating every two rows. 
5. Knit both sleeves from old skein, and switch to new skein when I run out. 

Clearly, this is ridiculous.  I've never run out of yarn before, so I've never faced these kinds of decisions.  But I didn't put this much thought into choosing grad schools.  The longer I think about it, the more options I discover.  (Knit one sleeve with old skein, knit second sleeve alternating new and old skeins.  Alternate skeins with greater/lesser frequency the closer I get to the sleeve cap so that the cap will be mostly old skein so as to match front and back knit from just old skeins ...  The polar ice caps are melting, and my most pressing concern is two different dye lots of yarn.)

From a distance, it's not too bad.  (Hello, poor, sad, neglected Granny Stripe in the corner!)

In the end, I'm going with option 4.  It's the most time consuming, but the safest in terms of producing two identical sleeves with the best hope of matching the rest of the sweater. 

In these circumstances, what would you do? 

a winter lament

At the risk of people throwing things at me, I've got to say I'm sort of bummed it's been such a mild winter.  Everyone around here is ecstatic and acting like they're finally getting the kind of winter they deserve, but I could really use a couple good storms.  We've had maybe three inches of snow, total.  And that's being generous.  I'd really like a good ten inches that stays around for a while. 

First, I like winter.  Snow really is magical, the way it transforms everything.  It's special.  It only happens a few times out of the whole year.  I know it's a big hassle to clean up and drive in, and I get tired of those chores after a few months just like everyone else, but we shouldn't let the extra work distract us from the specialness of a good snow.

Second, we need winter.  I'm from California, so I know that a mild, dry, warm winter is not a gift.  It's serious concern, and can actually mean life and death.  Without a snowpack in the back country that will melt throughout the spring and runoff through the summer, the forests and brush be mountains of kindling by September.  And my home and the homes of the people I love will be nestled among the firewood like sitting ducks.  It's almost an animal instinct in me--when there's not enough water in the winter, my hide is prickly with anxiety. 

Third, on a much lighter and selfish note, I want to wear my woolies!  What's the good in having cuddly warm cowls and sweaters and hats if it's too hot to wear them? 

Most folks around here are thrilled that it's 55 degrees in January, and they act like any mention of the Season-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named will completely jinx them, so I've kept my laments to myself.  But surely there are other knitters out there who feel like something's not quite right when you can't layer yourself in handknits in January, right? 

Ah well.  Here's what I have on the needles at the moment.

• A Peabody sweater.  This is from the Brooklyn Tweed Fall 2011 collection.  

I love this sweater so far.  It's the perfect blend of miles of stockinette and beautiful lace to keep things interesting.  I can knit it when I'm exhausted and can't spare any brain energy, and I can knit when I'm alert and need something to keep me thinking.  I'm using Cascade 220 that I got in the Webs anniversary sale last year.  It's a purple heather with shades of blue, coral, and pink.  I love it!

• A never-ending Thundercloud Cowl.  

I started this thing a thousand years ago.  I made pretty good progress, but then took a break for Christmas knitting, and I lost all my mohair mojo.  It's a simple pattern and I like it, but knitting with the mohair is like knitting in molasses.  I'm in slo-mo.  I just have one more repeat and I could probably knock it out in two nights.  Sigh. 

• My beautiful Granny Stripe Blanket!  

I'm about halfway done, I think.  It's going to be way huger than I'd planned, but that's okay.  A too-big blanket doesn't exist, and a too-small blanket is the worst.  I think it might be able to fit a twin bed, so if we ever get a twin bed, we'll have something to put on it! 

• Some home-dec sewing, a first for me.

That's a Heather Bailey print.  I have a couple others to add in my slow family room redo. 

Time to head out and enjoy the sunshine, I guess!