Knitasha von Stashenskeins

Off the Beaten Path

Posting on the fly today - it has been a heckuva week!  I was the doctor on call and every morning I had 5 or 6 newborns in the hospital (we usually average 2).  They weren't all "boring" healthy babies either, so they kept me on my toes.  TGIS!!

All this on call nonsense has meant less time for knitting, but I have made a little more progress on my Autumn Leaves sweater.  I'm far enough now to tell you that, technically, it is no longer an Autumn Leaves sweater.  (Don't hyperventilate - I didn't frog it!)

When I finally finished the 16 miles cm of corrugated ribbing, I dug the stitch charts out of my knitting bag and quickly found myself disenchanted.

If you've ever done stranded colorwork, you know that it is desirable to pick stitch patterns that don't require you to carry the color not in use more than five or so stitches.    "Floats" longer than that will catch on your fingers, and also make it harder to maintain an even gauge.  If you pull the floats too tightly against the back, your knitting puckers, but it is harder to keep very long floats loose.



Here's a blurry photo of a bit of the leaf pattern, so you can see what I'm talking about.  See the wide sections without color changes?  The very first row has 18 stitches of main color between each stitch of contrast color.  In the wise words of Dana Carvey, "Not gonna do it.  Wouldn't be prudent."

But I want a cool Kauni sweater with leaves!!  (Stomps foot)

Then I remembered a sweater I made for my Dad ages ago using a leaf pattern by Elizabeth Zimmermann. A quick rummage through my EZ books and I found it in Knitting Workshop.  I printed out some knitter's graph paper and got to work.  I'm keeping the underarm gussets from Ruth Sorensen's original pattern, and my shaping will be the same, I've just substituted the leaf pattern.



See the pretty leaves?



Now I can have a Kauni sweater with leaves and I won't have to lose my mind knitting it.  Yay!  I've said it before and I'll say it again: "EZ rocks!"

Just Keep Ribbing

I am the only stationary member of my family this month; everyone else is globe trotting.  Last week, my older daughter was gone Mon-Fri being a cabin leader at the 6th grade camp.  Now that she's back, my younger daughter is off for her week at camp.  And in the middle, my husband was gone on a golf trip from Thurs-Sun.  With all this coming and going, there are half-packed suitcase all over and my laundry room keeps getting massive infusions of dirty clothes.  I worked on laundry Saturday and Sunday and I'm nowhere near the end of it.

But that doesn't mean I haven't been knitting.  The Kauni sweater saw a lot of action this weekend.  I worked on it Friday morning at the coffee shop with Karen, Friday night at the varsity football game (victory!), and Saturday night at the 21st annual Anthony Wayne Festival of Bands.  All this added up to many centimeters of corrugated ribbing.



Dig those crazy color changes!  I only have a row or two until I reach 16 centimeters and then it's time to start the leaves.  I'm going to put the stitches on hold first and try it on.  The bottom of this sweater is meant to flare out, but I want to make sure the body is not too wide before I go any farther.  This sweater will fit me in the end or I'll die trying.

I had big plans to work on it yesterday afternoon in between folding clothes, but it wasn't meant to be.  My husband got home mid-day from his golf trip and was totally tuckered out.  By the time I went and got the grocery shopping done, he had collapsed in our room for an uncharacteristic nap.  Of course, my knitting was also in our room, and I didn't want to wake him up trying to get it.

What do you do when you can't get your hands on your yarn?  Make new yarn!  Luckily, my spinning wheel has settled into the corner of my dining room so I had access.  By yesterday evening, I had spun up the second skein from the beautiful fiber I bought from Erica. 



From farther away, this yarn looks mostly pink, but close up it is a yummy blend of pink, purple, yellow, and a few random bits of white.



I need to wash both skeins and hang them to set the twist, and then I'll wind them and see how much yardage I have.  If I have enough, I'd really like to try to make a pair of the sideways garter-stitch gloves out of it.  I definitely have to use it for something!  All of this spinning is not helping my stash get any smaller.   And now Yarn Haven has alpaca sock yarn.  I was up to my elbows in Kauni last week, so my credit card stayed safely in my purse, but I doubt that I can resist it two weeks in a row.

Testing My Patience

As promised, here is a picture of Fifi and me.  (Note to self: get back to gym pronto!)



I still plan to block it to try to stop a little of the neck curling.  Choosing the sleeve length was a piece of cake: divide yarn remaining after body into two equal balls, then knit sleeves until out of yarn.  Ta Da!!

With great anticipation, I then turned to my next project, a sweater of such beauty that I'd ordered the pattern and the yarn approximately five minutes after I first linked to it from Marina's blog.  It might not be kosher, but I swiped this picture from the knit-along so you could see it.  (Yes, of course I joined!)



Can you stand it!!  A brilliant woman named Ruth Sorensen designed it especially for the long color repeats of Kauni yarn.  (Her fabulous and foreign website is here.)

So, do you remember my Kauni yarn?  Here, let me show you again.

So, the blue will be the background color and the green and yellow will be the leaves.  I couldn't wait to get started, but first I had to wind up the green skein.  (Thankfully the blue is already on a nice cone)

Ever put a skein on your swift and discover that whoever knotted it got careless and messed up some of the strands?  This was one of those skeins.  It was catching on itself and not unwinding, so I finally had to take it off the swift and just spread it on the floor.  This worked for awhile.



I got this much wound, and then disaster struck.  The yarn started catching on itself more and more, all semblance of a hank was lost, and I wound up with this.



Good grief.  (Did I mention this skein is 400 meters?)

There was nothing left to do but slow and painstaking untangling.  An hour Tuesday morning and another hour after work barely made a dent.  I threw the mess into a bag and took it to knitting night, where I worked on it for 2 more hours.  Many of the other knitters were very distressed; I think just being in proximity to such an unholy knot was making their heads hurt.  More than one person begged me to just buy new yarn, and when I said I had ordered it from Canada, they said "That's not so far!"

But I resisted the pressure to pack it in and just kept working.  There were several more frustrating hours at home, with my husband occasionally wandering in the room to shake his head and say, "How much would new yarn cost?"  But in the end, my patience was rewarded.



Whew!

Today at work, I knit 303 rows of I-cord with the lighter green and then picked up stitches along it to start the corrugated ribbing.  I only have about an inch of ribbing so far, and it is dark and late, so I'll wait until tomorrow to take a picture.  Karen and I are meeting for coffee (tea for me) and knitting in the morning, so maybe I can add another inch before I show it to you.  On size 3 needles, this will not be a quick knit, but I'm hoping the color changes will keep me mesmerized.  I can't wait to get to the leaves!

Late Breaking News

This just in...Fifi is done!



Fresh off the needles and still warm.

This dark and blurry photo is just to offer proof of completion.  I promise I will get someone to take a picture of me wearing it, hopefully in natural light.  I really love it, and I'm really glad it is done!!

And now, I get to start my new super secret project.  I ordered the yarn weeks ago, but I didn't even open the package until tonight, because I didn't want to be distracted.  Now my needles are free and I can give it all of my attention.



Here's the yarn.  Any guesses?  Wait, I'll give you one more hint.



Stay tuned, sports fans.

Snails, Molasses, and Fifi

Things that go slow!!!

I have been working on Fifi - honest!  I worked on it Tuesday at knitting night, Wednesday night at a soccer game, and in-between patients at work today.  It just seems like the dang thing isn't growing!

Well, it is growing, just not at a rate visible to the human eye.  When I tried it on Monday night, it reached to just below my boobs - holy crop top, Batman!  Tonight, I put the stitches on hold again and pulled it back on.

So...a little longer, but not long enough.  Wouldn't you think 3 days of knitting would have gotten me farther?

What I have learned is that this sweater is very deceptive on the needles.  Inches of length disappear when it's worn due to the side-to-side stretch.  That means I cannot bind this off on the basis of what my tape measure tells me, I will just have to keep trying it on.

I'm a little worried about the neckline.  The pattern picture shows no rolling whatsoever, but mine is rolling quite a little bit.  Is this a by-product of my yarn substitution?  Does it just need a good blocking?  I may have to go back and knit on a neck edging to get it to lay flat.  What do you think, Donna, did you have this problem?

If I can't finish a sweater, at least I'm finishing books.  Yesterday I finished Henry James' The Europeans. which was the only "souvenir" I bought in New York.  ($3 at a sidewalk sale - how could I resist?)  It is a tiny slip of a book, but I enjoyed it.  At lunch today, I finally reached the last page of The End of the Pierall the Beatles, gosh darn it!  Besides, John and George might be watching!  Yep, I'm a nut. by Martha Grimes, which I did not enjoy but felt duty-bound to finish.  I love her Inspector Jury novels so much that I felt it would be a betrayal to toss this book aside when it failed to grab my interest.  Am I the only one who suffers from such random, unrewarded loyalty?  It's just like me and the Beatles.  When one of the few Beatles songs I really don't like comes on the radio, I won't turn it off.  Love the Beatles, love

Now that my self-imposed book slog is over, I can pick something new!  I'm leaning toward Birds Without Wings by Louis De Bernieres.  He wrote Corelli's Mandolin which is a fantastic book that bears absolutely no resemblance to the truly heinous movie starring Nicholas Cage.

*Note to Nick Cage.  Dude, you aren't fooling anybody.  We all know you're bald, we've known it for years.  Your pathetic attempts at scalp coverage are reminding us more and more of *horrified whisper* the Donald.  It is not too late to summon your inner Bruce Willis.  Stop the madness, embrace the baldness, and get back to making good movies like Raising Arizona.   Thank you.

Furry Friends

Big day at Yarn Haven on Saturday - alpacas were visiting!!



Aren't they cute? 

Dale sent out emails letting people know about the visit, so I made sure I got up and got over there Saturday morning at the ungodly hour of 10am (I know!).  I took my youngest along for company, figuring alpacas would be good for at least 15 minutes of entertainment before she got bored and wanted to move on.



Boy was I wrong!!  The kid went alpaca crazy.  She hung around that cage for more than 2 hours, feeding them leaves and grilling their owner about the ins and outs of alpaca farming.  By the time we left, an alpaca was at the top of her Christmas list and she had an elaborate plan for a nationwide alpaca lecture circuit.  (Apparently her dad will be getting a pilot's license to facilitate the travel)

She is not renowned for her attention span, so we'll see how long the craze lasts.  Let's just say, it was a very good thing that there were not baby alpacas for sale at Yarn Haven yesterday.  As a substitute, she picked out some yarn.



This is Birch by fibranatura - 50% superwash merino, 30% alpaca, 20% silk.  The color is Iris Orchid.
She has decreed this will become some wristlets for her to wear when the weather gets cooler, so I guess those go in my never ending queue.

The nice thing about alpaca fever was that I got 2 hours of porch knitting on Fifi.  We needed bug spray to fend off the mosquitoes, but the weather was perfect.  Dale and I had a great time watching motorists pause in front of the store and then almost run off the road as they tried to make sense of what they were seeing.  We thought the car parked across the street was surely doomed, but it hadn't been hit yet when the alpaca queen and I left for lunch.

All that porch knitting plus an evening of channel surfing between the US Open and college football means that the yoke of Fifi is now finito. 



Once the sleeve stitches had been set aside and I started the body pattern, I was somewhat dismayed to find that the pattern expected me to have a cable centered front and back.  I swear I followed the pattern to the letter, but the center of both my front and back is a plain 4-stitch column.  Yikes!

I simple cannot imagine ripping back to the beginning this late in the game, so I am rolling with it instead.  I have made a minor pattern adjustment to compensate and I'm moving on.  I'd say I have about 2" of the body done.  The pattern calls for something ridiculous like 9" total, but I will be making mine quite a bit longer, having no desire to share my midriff with the world.  I will also make the sleeves a little longer - several of the knitters on Ravelry who have already knit Fifi changed the sleeve length, so I'll use those pictures to help me.  Ravelry rocks!!

P.S. Notice that my bloglist on the sidebar has been updated and significantly expanded.  Took me quite awhile to get it done, but it was a job long overdue.  Now all my favorite bloggers get credit!

Small Town Girls Hit the Big City

This post almost turned into a crazed rant about the terrible day I had yesterday, but I decided to spare you.  (For now.  I do not guarantee this blog will be rant-free in the future.)  Instead, I'll tell you a little about our big weekend!

Lindsey, Kelsey (Lindsey's BFF) and I left Whitehouse midday on Friday and made the 9+ hour drive to Philadelphia.  We collapsed gratefully into beds supplied by my sister-in-law and slept like the dead until 8am, when Lindsey decided it was time to round 'em up and head 'em out.  Following a brief skirmish in the driveway re: footwear (why do teenagers put flip-flops in the "walking shoes" category?) we headed out on foot to the local train station.  And yes, of course I lost the skirmish, which afforded me many "I told you so!" moments as the weekend progressed.

Lindsey was in charge of this leg of our journey as she was the only one who had ridden the train system in Philadelphia before.  She did an admirable job, despite losing her carefully compiled train schedule approximately 20 minutes into our expedition.  We made it safely to Trenton, New Jersey, where we boarded an Amtrak train for Penn station.

We stumbled out onto the city streets just after 1:00pm and started walking uptown.  The handy-dandy subway map I'd grabbed in the station helped us find Broadway and Times Square, where we stood gawking with all the other tourists at the flashing lights and colossal billboards.  We were so distracted that we forgot about lunch and just kept walking until about 3pm when Lindsey hit the blood-sugar wall and started snarling at us.  A very nice Indian restaurant was in the right place at the right time and we fortified ourselves. 

After lunch, we got down to business and made some goals.  The plan was to see Columbia and Bernard before 6pm, and then get the hell out of the city before the real freaks came out.  Our map and our feet told us we needed to seek out public transportation, so we made our first foray down into the subway system.

For subway rookies, I'd say we did very well.  We made it to Columbia safely and I finally remembered that a) I have a camera and b) I have a blog.

This is one of the libraries at Columbia.  The campus is beautiful with lots of great old buildings.  We couldn't set up a formal tour due to the holiday weekend, but we did just fine wandering around on our own. 

Bernard is just across the street from Columbia and it took Lindsey about five minutes to decide it was too small and not what she was looking for.  (Yay!  One over-priced college crossed off the list!)  So we took another subway to Grand Central Station and from there caught a train to White Plains.  (Everyone who has ever been to New York just said, "WHAT?!")

It really makes perfect sense.  Hotel rooms available in New York started over $300 a night for a tiny closet that wouldn't sleep 3 people.  I knew we had to go north of the city to see Sarah Lawrence College anyway, so why not look for a room up there somewhere?  White Plains is only 3 stops north of Bronxville where Sarah Lawrence is, and my AAA discount got me a nice big room for $152.00.  Even with the $15 cab ride from the train to the hotel, we made out like bandits.  A late, somewhat bizarre dinner from room service, and then we slept like rocks.

Day 2 in the city - When the going gets rough

Checked out and got back to the train without incident and made it to Bronxville just after 10 am.  The printout I had from the Sarah Lawrence website told us all about what train to take and what stop to get off, but there were no directions after that.  It must be right next to the train station, right?

Nope.  So we asked a waitress at a cafe for directions, and that's about the time it all went to hell.  I would like to think this girl was not malicious, just a freaking idiot, but she sent us completely in the wrong direction and we walked for miles before we realized it.  (Note for future Bronxville visitors - no cabs, no buses, no subway.  Just lots of people who have a) no idea how to get to Sarah Lawrence or b) have never even heard of Sarah Lawrence)

We had pretty much given up and were trudging back to the train station when we finally hit upon the one Bronxville resident with a clue.  The good news: he could direct us to Sarah Lawrence.  The bad news: it was at least 2 more miles of walking.  Our backpacks were gouging our shoulders, are feet were aching, and we were dying of the heat, so I was all for just getting back on the train.  Lindsey begged and pleaded and we reluctantly agreed to struggle onward.

We finally found it and I'm really glad we did.  There were lots of students around, as the freshman were just moving in, and we caught the eye of a nice group of upperclassmen loitering in front of their dorm.  Hearing we were from Ohio and couldn't get a tour, one of them graciously offered to show us around.  He gave us a great tour and answered all Lindsey's questions.  When we staggered off campus to get back to the train, Lindsey was ready to put Sarah Lawrence at the top of her list.  (And if we sell the house and live in a car, we might be able to swing tuition.)

Back to the city we went, and managed to find a fabulous noodle place in Greenwich Village for lunch.  (Best noodles I ever had, bar none.  Sammy's Noodle Shop on 6th Avenue and 11th St - you won't regret it.)  From there, it was a quick walk to NYU, which mostly surrounds Washington Square Park.



On such a beautiful day, this park had a nice mix of families and freaks, the perfect New York crowd.  We watched some seriously crazed street performers and I finally got the girls to stand still for a picture.



In order to protect my more sensitive readers, I left their pathologically filthy, flip-flop encased feet out of the shot.

We zoomed around the square looking at the NYU buildings and then I had high hopes that we could say farewell to the city and head for the train.  Yeah, right.  Lindsey had inexplicably set her mind on going down to the very tip of Manhattan and seeing the Statue of Liberty.  She didn't insist on a ferry ride, but she WAS NOT leaving New York until she at least got a far away glimpse.  Trudge, trudge back to the subway station.  Trudge, trudge through Battery Park.  And for all that trouble?



Yep.  Far away glimpse was an understatement.  But Lindsey was satisfied and I had permission to lead us back to Penn Station and the train out of town.

Right about now, Bronxville started looking like a walk in the park.  Let me explain.  No, there is too much.  Let me sum up.

Trains were not running uptown from the first 3 stations we tried.  (They were working on the tracks.  During a holiday weekend.  Excellent plan.)  We tried a couple of lateral transfers hoping to get around the closed track, but this threw off our already poor sense of direction.  (Who can tell uptown from downtown when you're in a tunnel?)  Next thing you know, we're in Brooklyn.  (People who have been to New York just fell off their chairs laughing)

In case you don't know, Brooklyn is not so much uptown.  Brooklyn, in fact, is not even part of Manhattan.  Brooklyn is across the East River from Manhattan.   We rode the subway the wrong way under a freaking river!!

At this point, we threw ourselves on the mercy of the closest woman that looked sane.  She was a) a native and b) also trying to get to Manhattan, so it was a fortuitous choice.  We stumbled in her wake from train to train and she managed to get us back near NYU when we again ran into the closed track issue.  Trudge, trudge several blocks to another station, where the trains are running uptown, BUT the one ticket machine is out of order.  Trudge, trudge several more blocks to the next station.  The universe finally decided to stop slapping us around, and we made it to Penn station.  Didn't arrive back in Philadelphia until after 10pm and had to walk over a mile IN THE DARK to get back to the house.

Not enough hours of sleep, too many hours of driving, and we were back in Toledo at 4pm Monday.  Whew!

If anyone is still reading this post, let me reward you with a tiny scrap of knitting content.



That is the first 30-odd rows of Fifi, which is all I managed to accomplish over the weekend.  Now that I am home, I have high hopes that it will start to move a little faster.  I can't wait to try the yoke on, and I really can't wait to start my next project!  But let's leave that for another day, shall we?