Knitasha von Stashenskeins

Last Day

I cannot believe 2007 is over.  I will spend the next month and a half trying to turn a seven into an eight when I write it wrong on scripts and charts.

The last weekend of the year was a good one.  On Saturday, it was all about the fiber.

First, I Kool-aid dyed some of the cream roving from Beaverslide.



I braided this roving myself cuz I am cool like that.

The redder part is strawberry and the purple is grape + black cherry.  I'm hoping it will spin up pretty.  This roving is not very soft and I found a lot of vegetable matter when I washed it, but it sure did take up the dye well. 

My husband stumbled upon my dyeing adventures in the laundry room and was seriously confused.  "What does it smell like in here?"  "Don't they sell real yarn dye somewhere?"  My explanation that Kool-aid is cheap and easy seemed to satisfy him, but he eyed the plastic-wrapped counter with concern.  Not to worry, no mess was made.

After the dyeing was done, my spinning wheel and I settled down in front of the TV to watch the Giants' vain yet valiant effort to defeat the Patriots. (Boo!)  I spun up two of my four ounces of The Unique Sheep
"Paradise" merino roving.

Pre-game:



Post-game analysis and interviews:



There is more purple in this than my little camera captured.  Unlike the Beaverslide wool, this is really soft.  I am hoping to make another skein out of the remaining two ounces and then knit myself some toe-up sleeping socks.  This is about 12 WPI, which is DK weight, so they would be thick but not ridiculous.

On Sunday, it was time to start a new knitting project.  Fresh from the last-minute frenzy of my Dad's Christmas sweater, I decided to start his birthday sweater now. 



I plan on this being a close-enough replica of a sweater I knitted him several years ago.  He has dieted himself down from a 48 to a 44, so he swims in that old sweater these days.  My mom was mourning it when I was home in October - she says it is her favorite.  So, without the sweater in front of me and only my spotty memory to guide me, I'm trying to make him a new one.

I ordered the yarn from Canada, so it was expensive to ship, but it has been years since I saw this yarn in a shop anywhere.  It is Paton's Shetland Ragg chunky.  The gray is "stone ragg", the blue is "denim ragg", and I have a little "storm ragg" for some accent stripes.  Luckily for me, the original sweater was just a bottom-up seamless raglan using EPS, so there is no fancy shaping to reproduce.  I haven't knit on such a big needle (US10) for ages, so it feels like the inches are flying by.  When next you see it, it will look a lot more like a sweater.

Just got a call from my office saying they are closing at lunchtime again, so I don't need to come in.  Woot, woot!  I'm off to the couch to curl up and knit.  Happy New Year to all my knitting peeps!!

Metamorphosis

You start out with some pretty roving.

A few hours later, that becomes lovely yarn.

Several hours in a coffee shop and then one and a quarter bowl games, and you have yourself a pair of handspun Fetchings.

Karen gave me this beautiful roving for Christmas, and I had missed spinning so much that I spun it up on Christmas Day.  She included the packing slip in the package, but it has been lost in the post-holiday cleanup.  If you really have to know where she got it, go bug her in her comments and I bet she will tell you. 

Between the spinning on Tuesday and the knitting on Friday, there were two days while the yarn was hanging in my basement to dry.  I was feeling a little purposeless after all of the focused Christmas knitting, and I wasn't ready to commit to a big project.

Saartje's bootees to the rescue!

I have been wanting to make a pair of these ever since I first saw them online, so I had the link to the pattern bookmarked.  Wednesday night, I printed it up and dug out a little left-over sock yarn.  The multi-color is the Kool-Aid dyed self-striping yarn I made for the Jaywalker socks and the top edge/straps is the Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock I used for Bayerische.  Not a perfect color match, but close enough.  I had the teeny white buttons in my button tin, and I have four left for pair #2!

When I get to pair #2, I think I will make the larger size.  These babies are tiny!!  I'm sure they will fit a newborn, but only a small newborn and not for long.  They were a joy to make, however, so I'll just tuck them away for now.  In my experience, newborns arrive fairly regularly and they are always barefoot, so I'm sure I'll find someone to gift them to eventually.

If I am very good and work very hard today, I have hopes of sitting down for some more spinning tonight while I watch the football game.  C'mon Giants!!

Because I am a Bonehead

When I finally cast off my Dad's basketweave vest and blocked it late Monday night, I was too tired to remember to take a picture.  When I wove in the ends, stuffed it in a box, and dashed it off to the post office on Wednesday morning, I was too stressed to remember to take a picture.  SO...there are no existing photographs of my Dad's completed sweater.  For the first time in a year, one of my FO's may go undocumented!

My sister and my parents live in the same town, so I have begged her to try to get a picture of Dad in the sweater and email it to me.  If she doesn't, it will have to wait for the next time I travel to Arizona, and goodness only knows when that might be.

Since the vest was spirited away by the United States Postal Service, I have completed one more project, but I can't show you a picture of that either.   I know, I suck.  I finished it at work on Thursday morning and had to priority mail it on my lunch break so my sister would get it before Christmas.  Of course, my camera did not come to work with me.  I was able to take pictures on my cell phone, but I have been entirely unsuccessful at convincing my phone to share said pictures with my computer.  The technology whiz is at basketball practice, so it will have to wait.

ANYWAY....the project was a last minute booties and bonnet combo for a Tiny Tears doll.  My crazy sister bought one for my crazy mother.   It seems she had one when she was little, but her mother threw it away when she fed it real milk and it started to smell.  My mother has never really gotten over this, so my sister found one on ebay.  (To save you the trouble, here is a link to a Tiny Tears doll if you were born after 1960 and you have no idea what I'm talking about.) 

The doll my sister bought came naked as a jaybird unclothed, so she has carefully sewn her a fancy party dress and begged me to make it booties and a hat.  I already had more Christmas knitting than I could handle, so of course I agreed.

My sister said the color most likely to match her dress would be a metallic gold, so I found some gold crochet thread at Michael's.  I knit the booties using my standard booties recipe, only on size 1's.  (Dolly's feet are only 2" long)  Time was getting short, so I opted to (gasp) crochet the headgear to speed up the process.  In my younger years, I crocheted enough baby blankets using the bushy stitch to permanently implant the stitch pattern in my brain.   I improvised a bonnet shape by crocheting a rectangle for the back of the head and then picking up stitches on three sides of the rectangle and crocheting the brim.  Add some chain-stitch chin ties and Bob's your uncle.  (From where in my fevered brain did that little phrase pop up?  I think maybe Dick Van Dyke says it in Mary Poppins.)

I am fairly certain that my sister will feel obliged to take a picture of the doll in all of her finery, so I should be able to show you a non-cellphone picture eventually.  I really wish I could be there when my mom opens it - I predict that more than a few tiny tears will flow.

There is one last Christmas knitting project in the works, but I'll save that for next time because I have big news!  Since my last post, I have acquired a new kid!!

The kid in question is a 17 year old exchange student from Italy who goes to school with my older daughter.  Last week she unexpectedly and abruptly lost her original host family and was suddenly homeless.  Can you imagine your teenage daughter alone in a foreign country and the people who you were trusting to take care of her suddenly dropping her? 

We have a nice guest room that sits empty for most of the year, so we volunteered to take her in.  A quick site visit and background checks were completed, and she moved in on Tuesday night.

Understandably, this poor girl was pretty traumatized by the sudden upheaval of her entire universe, but she has settled in well and I think we'll be able to provide her a safe and comfortable place to finish out the school year.  She was invited to spend Christmas with her favorite teacher, but I did manage to get her name glitter-painted on a stocking and pick up a few treats to fill it with so she can take it along with her.   Once she comes back, we have agreed that I will teach her to knit and she will teach me to make some Italian dishes.  Fun!

Okay, now I have to go wrap presents and do some laundry.  Fun...not!!  If I don't manage to post again before Tuesday, I hope Santa brings you alpaca and cashmere and you have a very Merry Christmas!!

Knit Like The Wind

Not a lot to blog about today.  I am still working on my Dad's Christmas vest.  I have put the armhole stitches on waste yarn, worked the rows of armhole decreases, and I just got the bottom stitches of the v-neck on hold.



Sorry, this picture is dismal.  It is very dark out despite being 9:15 in the morning, so I had to use the flash.

I would really like to get this done by Monday so I can mail it, but I have fears that the shopping I need to do is going to take me most of today and then I have my office Christmas dinner tonight.

Sunday has a better chance of being an all-day knit marathon.  There is allegedly a big snowstorm moving in overnight, and I have heard predictions ranging from 1 to 8 inches.  (Anybody else suspect meteorologists just use a dart board for their forecasts?)  If we get a bunch of snow, it will be a great excuse to stay home and just knit away.  Even better, I have a Gilmore Girls DVD and a Firefly DVD from Netflix to watch.  If I could get the laundry to do itself, I might never have to get off the couch!

Since I have nothing else new to show you, how about a FO from the past?



On the right is the flannel stocking I made Andy the very first Christmas when we were dating, and on the left is the stocking I knit myself several years later when I was practicing the fascinating techniques from Nancy Bush's "Folk Knitting in Estonia".  (That is a super-cool book, by the way, you should get one if they are still in print)  In my defense, I did not set out to make the world's largest Christmas stocking, it just turned out that way.  Memory tells me this is made of Nature Spun Worsted in the most garish Christmas colors they had.  On the bright side, if anyone decides to get me an alpaca this year, it should fit easily into my stocking and prevent a lot of frustrating wrapping effort.

One last picture, another one from the ice storm.  These are frozen-solid Christmas lights on an evergreen tree.



Brrrr!  Everybody stay warm out there.

Goodness Gracious...

...great balls of roving!



(Coffee cup added for scale)

These lovelies are from Beaverslide Dry Goods of Dupuyer, Montana.  We're going to blame this purchase on Knititch, who has been raving about some Beaverslide worsted she is using to make a sweater for a friend.  I had never heard of the brand, so I checked out their website and soon found that they sell roving as well as yarn.

The ball on the left is Jersey Cream (perfect for kool-aid dyeing) and the ball on the right is Thimbleberry.  The prices were so reasonable that I ordered 8 oz of both colors, not realizing just how big a bundle of roving 8 oz really is.  Unless I contract a nasty bout of amnesia, I don't think I'll be able to justify another roving purchase for quite a while!

No school for the kids today.  We had a big ice storm yesterday and the roads are still a mess.  I have to go into work this afternoon, so I am really hoping for a thaw.

I took some crazy ice pictures to share with you.



This is a holly bush beside my front walkway.



A light fixture beside my driveway.



Berries on a tree out front.



A very sad birch tree that usually stands upright but is now weighted down by a ton of ice.  Hard to believe that this poor guy will ever be the same.  Better to bend than break, I guess.

I finished Aidan's mittens and put a little elastic inside the cuffs to help them stay on.



Then I whipped up a quick pair of Fetchings for my sister.



These are made of Diakeito Diamusee yarn - 100% wool.  Much softer than Kuryeon, but similar gorgeous colors.  The label tells me I bought this yarn at Knit A Round in Ann Arbor, my favorite roadtrip yarn store.

That ends my instant gratification Christmas knitting for now.  On Friday night I started my Dad's Christmas sweater.  I think this might be the latest I have ever started it.  Sweaters for my Dad's birthday and Christmas are absolutely mandatory.  He is my most appreciative knitting recipient, so I have to keep him happy.

Luckily for me, Dad prefers what the world calls vests or waistcoats.  He calls them "those sweaters without sleeves".   Without sleeves to worry about, I actually have a prayer of getting this done in time to mail it (likely Express Mail for more money than I paid for the yarn).



I took this basketweave stitch pattern out of "The New Knitting Stitch Library".  It was easy to memorize and I like how it looks.  Of course, it progresses slower than plain stockinette, but I never claimed to be logical.  I need 15" to get to the armholes and I have 5.5 so far.  I'm thinking I better get back to it!

Nice People Rock

One of the coolest things about my new spinning obsession is that spinning supplies are not mass produced.  You will not find spinning accessories or hand-dyed roving at Michael's.  Pre-internet days, this was probably a pain in the butt, but in the age of Etsy and Ebay, it is refreshing.  When you buy stuff for spinning, you are buying from a mom and pop shop, or even just a mom who ships right out of her living room.

It is so nice to deal with people instead of corporations!  I had a very positive shopping experience recently, so I thought I'd tell you guys about it.  If you are looking for nice people to buy from, I've got you covered. 

A couple of weeks ago, I ordered some superwash merino roving from The Unique Sheep.  (Warning, non-spinners, they sell yarn as well!)  I paid through PayPal and somehow managed to mess it up and duplicate my order.  I sent an email to Unique Sheep and explained my problem.  Laura emailed me back that very day, and had already fixed it so that the payment for the duplicate order was credited back to my PayPal account!

So I sat back to wait for my beautiful roving.  Just about the time I was starting to wonder, I got a nice note from Laura apologizing for the delay.  To make it up to me, she sent a cute little mini-sock kit to tide me over.  Free stuff is cool, free yarn is freakin' cool!

I figured my roving might take another week, but it arrived only 2 days after the sock kit, and it was worth the wait!  Feast your eyes on this:



I've got 4 ounces of this yummy stuff to play with, just as soon as my Christmas knitting is done.  It is killing me to wait - I want to spin it NOW!!

But I have been good so far, and the knitting continues.



Magic Stripes socks are done, yada, yada, yada.

Next up is mittens for my niece Aiden.  Despite being a desert-dweller, she loves mittens and hats for the dress-up potential.  I am making these out of a cashmere blend by Bernat in pink and plum.



I started this one about 2:30 yesterday afternoon and had it done before bedtime even though I squeezed a lot of other tasks into the same time period.  Mitten #2 may not be done today, though, as I have to feed the girl's varsity basketball team tonight. 

The cable pattern on the mitten is from Elsebeth Lavold's book "Viking Patterns for Knitting".  I have never knit one of the sweaters from the book, but I lift cables out of it all the time. 

Much cooking awaits me, so I must away to the kitchen!

P.S. How do you kitchener the top of a mitten worked in reverse stockinette?  Turn it inside out!   I am so very sneaky.