Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Answer #1:  Krystyna has been successfully overdyed (whew!).  If I squint really hard, I imagine I can still see where the evil dye lot issue was, but in the real world, the sweater is saved and wearable (and still blue!), thanks to the remarkable expertise and generous spirit of Super Nancy at Woven Art!  Pictures to follow.

Answer #2:  I'm almost done with the back of the Cable and Moss Stitch Panel Cardigan.  You'll see better photos (I hope) when I get this piece on the blocking board.  The yarn is a salmony color, which I'd say is an orange-ish pink.  I'm therefore considering it a Project Spectrum project for both March (reds/pinks) and April (yellows/oranges).

Answer #3:  A late entry for March's Project Spectrum colors is this red Tank Top (shown in swatch form) designed by Leigh Radford, and found in her great new book One Skein.  I'm anticipating using three skeins, though (yes sir, yes sir), because I substituted a wool/linen blend from Louet Sales called MerLin Tristan.  I'm extending a few red projects into April because I'll be hard pressed to find much orange or yellow to knit with, although I did find a few things that might qualify . . .

Answer #4:  It didn't dawn on me that anyone would think Mysteries 1 and 4 were related.  I'm not sure cauliflower is the ideal test subject for dye, but I can see how the connection was made.  This is how I found it in the grocery store, and I couldn't pass it up.  It came in orange, too, and the "normal" color.  The only thing I can think of is that it was around the time of Mardi Gras, and maybe they were suggesting that you cook up some appropriately colored side dishes?  Who knows.  It tasted just like regular cauliflower, and the water (after steaming) turned the same gorgeous shade of purple.  I was worried about our teeth (and our urine, quite frankly), but nothing untoward happened.

Kristi got most of the answers right, and she wins absolutely nothing!  Congratulations, Kristi! 

I'm taking the Entrelac Cardigan off of the "On the needles" list because I took it out for a test drive today and the first stranger who saw me said "That's a beautiful sweater!"  After ascertaining that no one had paid her to make the compliment, and after hearing the positive reviews of my knitting friends, I decided the cardigan was fine the way it was.  Here it is, along with me and most of my chins (I had to cut off one of my heads -- it was too hideous for public viewing):

Isn't that a natural-looking pose?  I should be pursuing a modeling career!

Or perhaps a career in photography:

And here's Janeen in HER beautiful Entrelac Cardigan, from the same Entrelac Design class:

Didn't she do a fantastic job?  And the subtle coloring suits her so well!  Brava, Janeen!

Tomorrow is the kids' last day of classes before Spring Break.  Our plans fell through for a variety of reasons, so we'll be hanging out at home.  Apparently you have to plan more than a week in advance if you want either a hotel room for your family or a kennel for your dog during Spring Break.  And it helps if the people you want to visit are able to receive visitors without the risk of babies accidentally popping out.

Ah, well.  It will be nice to sleep in. 

No, really.  It will be nice to sleep in.  I just don't know when that will ever happen.  The kids get up even earlier when they don't have school.

Gah.

Sarah

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Mystery solved?  I suspect the hits from LSU's website are to view the Tiger Baby Bootees I knit for Terri in 2004.  That photo has been receiving a comparable number of hits lately.

I have nothing for you, due to an acute lack of mental stamina.

Instead, I present more mysteries:

What are these?

Mystery #1:

Mystery #2:

Mystery #3:

Mystery #4:

What're YOUR guesses? 

Sarah

Monday, March 20, 2006

Can anyone tell me why I'm getting a gajillion hits from the message board on Louisiana State University's sports website?  I'm just curious. 

Happy Spring!  I saw two robins today.  I know some of them stay in Michigan year round, but it was nice to see them today, anyway.

Nona's new name seems to be . . . well . . . Nona.  We are absolutely the laziest and most disorganized family I have ever met.  No one could agree on a new name, nor could we stick to the task of naming her without constantly getting distracted and then forgetting what we were doing in the first place.  So.  Nona it is.

She seems to have made herself right at home.  Keiko (the dog) chases Nona a couple of times a day, which is exactly how Keiko also treats Mica (Cat Number One).  Mica has become very curious.  Today she repeatedly balanced on her hind legs (meerkat-like) next to Son Number One's bed, hoping to catch a glimpse of Nona, who was nestled between the blankets of my son's unmade bed and a wet towel from his morning shower. 

See?

Can you see her green eyes?

How about now?

I have a nice little pile of finished projects to show you.  I seem to have stopped showing projects-in-progress for the time being, probably because I've only been posting entries when I finish something.  And they've been small somethings. 

For example:

This is another sample for my Introduction to Intarsia class, knit with Cascade 220 Superwash.  I should really stick something in there for scale.  It's about nine inches tall and twelve inches wide.  Don't the stitches look nice and even?  Now look at it without the flash:

Not quite as perfect-looking, eh?  Let that be a lesson to me -- photos taken for the purpose of publishing patterns should be taken with the flash on, so as to make the items look better!

And here's the back, which appears to be completely different colors, but is not. 

I have no desire to unlock the mysteries of digital photography.  I'm just happy to slap some photos on the blog for you.

Mica's (and Nona's) bed is shown next, blocking around the wheelbarrow inner tube from the hardware store (suggested by Moebius cat bed designer Cat Bordhi, inflated to slightly more than maximum density by bicycle-pump-wielding Jacqué, who joined me in a little felting party). 

The fabric of this bed became pretty darned solid, but didn't shrink as much as I had hoped.  Here's the before picture again:

and the after picture:

Actually, that can of Pounce treats looks bigger in the "after" photo, so maybe I'm wrong.  I, being me, forgot to measure the darned thing before felting.  I could measure it now, but it wouldn't really help, would it?

Mica has been seen sitting upright inside the bed, and she's also been seen gnawing on the side (an established fetish of hers -- chewing on knitted fabric -- bad kitty!), but not actually using the bed for its bed-like qualities.  It's big enough for Keiko, Mica and Nona to all cram inside together, so maybe she was waiting for them to join her.

Son Number One, despite my best efforts, turned another year older last week.  To celebrate, I busted my fanny to finish his Entrelac pillows in time.  Technically, the ends aren't woven in, but he doesn't seem to mind.

Front (already christened with drool -- can you see it on one of the bigger navy blue squares?):

And back, with zipperage:

The yarn is Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted, and the patterns are my own, based on my son's request.  The colors are his high school's (yeah, right).  No really, they are.

I'm out of pictures, but I can tell you that the Entrelac Cardigan is also finished, but back in the to-do pile.  The zipper installation went beautifully, but the sleeves grew with washing, as I knew they would.  I'll be shortening them, but not until after my Entrelac Design class starts on Thursday night at ThreadBear. 

I'm out of words.

Sarah

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

First, I want to show off some of my students' work.

Here's Lisa, modeling her first scarf and the hat her mom made during their private lessons with me:

Don't they look great?  Lisa and her mom are working on Suki bags now (an early knitty.com pattern -- I'd link to it, but I don't think you'll be able to get back here from knitty's website).

Diane finished her bag from my Introduction to Entrelac class:

Hot pink is Diane's signature color -- it really glows in this photo.  Hooray for very cool Entrelac bags!

Karen added her own ideas to the sweater from my Beginning Finishing class:

Isn't it adorable?  Fellow student Barb gave her some bone-shaped buttons to match, in exchange for the puppy charts.  Way to play nice, ladies!

What about me?  Where's MY knitting?

I put my Pomatomus sock on hold because, as happens occasionally, I've got a big pile of stuff to finish, including four (FOUR!) zippers to install:

I've been plugging away at those zippers, but I took a break to make these:

for this.

Oh.  And we picked up a new cat yesterday.  A rescued kitty my vet's office was caring for when I took my dog Keiko in for her shots.

Meet Nona:

Nona is the name she came with, but we'll be changing it.  I'm trying to explain to my children that you can't name a pet anything that starts with the word "No".

Isn't she beautiful?  This flash photo doesn't particularly flatter her, but she's currently under quarantine from the other cats so I can't get her in the sunlight yet.  She's a lanky gray tabby with orange spots, and the most glorious green eyes I've ever seen on a cat.  Two years old.  Spayed, with all her shots up to date, thanks to the folks at the wilderness area who rescued her.  She's incredibly affectionate and seems very appreciative, and is getting along with everyone extremely well, including the dog, but not particularly the other cat (yet).

She's the first cat I've had (out of four) that purrs audibly, has a real "meow", and plays happily with catnip toys.  See?

Nona was the perfect cat, at the perfect place, at the perfect time. 

Happy!

Sarah

Friday, March 10, 2006

No, I haven't over-dyed Krystyna yet (insert clucking chicken noises here), and no, I haven't felted Mica's cat bed yet (Jacqué -- I'll e-mail you to set up a felting date).

Here's a pre-zipper blocking of my Entrelac cardigan:

Sheila dummy just figured out that she has no head!

Actually, I didn't want the sleeves to get any longer, so they're "laying flat to dry", while the body needs length and width, so it's "hanging wide to dry".

Where is Sheila's head?  Right here, modeling a completed Chainmail Hat.  With flash, so you can see the pattern:

And without flash, so you can see the color:

Directions for the Chainmail Hat, as well as for the orange Baby Sweater from my previous post, are in Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Almanac.

Now on the needles:  The beautiful Pomatomus Socks from knitty.com:

So far, the design is brilliant and the pattern is very clearly written.  I have to concentrate in order to knit these socks, which is good for my brain.  Yesterday I tried to work on them while chit chatting during my afternoon Knitter's Choice session, and I seem to have switched from "k2tog through the back loop" to "SSK" for a few rows.  The SSKs, while leaning in the proper direction, didn't look as crisp as the intended decreases, so I had to tear those rows back stitch by stitch and start over again.

I'm using a beautiful red and purple Koigu that I got on SALE recently at The Yarn Garden in Charlotte.  Now that I'm well into the sock, it appears to be Red Hat colors. 

Does that mean I can't wear them until I'm fifty? 

Sarah

Tuesday, March 7, 2006

I have a gazillion things to do, and I can't concentrate on any of them, so I'm dropping everything to write a blog entry.  I told my husband that he's going to come home from work some day soon to find me curled up in a little ball on the floor in the corner of the dining room, eyes squeezed shut, hands over my ears, rocking back and forth, chanting "there's too much to do . . . there's too much to do . . . there's too much to do . . ."

Wouldn't want him to be caught unawares.

I found the perfectly colored buttons for the baby sweater, so it's a for real finished object now.  See?

I pulled a beautiful deep red Cascade 220 and a coordinating black from my stash and started (and almost finished!) a chainmail hat from the March chapter of the Knitter's Almanac:

This project satisfied both the Almanac-along and Project Spectrum for March -- a twofer!  I've got more red projects planned, but I don't want to jinx myself by mentioning what I hope to accomplish.

I visited my local hardware store yesterday and talked to Don, who has previously helped me with making a carrying case for my blocking wires, and from whom we order our pasties (he used to own a restaurant . . . his wife makes fabulous pasties . . . my family is addicted to them . . . Don's willing to keep selling them as long as people keep buying them . . . but you have to order them at the hardware store where he works now). 

I asked Don where I would find an inner tube for a wheelbarrow. 

"What size do you need?" he asked.

"Uhhhhh . . ." said I, in my ongoing attempt to be the picture of elegance and grace.

"How big is your wheelbarrow?" Don continued.

"Well, it's not for a wheelbarrow."

"What's it for?"

"A cat bed."

"A what?"

"A cat bed.  I knit a cat bed, and now I'm going to throw it in the washing machine to shrink it, and it has to dry around a wheelbarrow inner tube to give it the right shape."

"Oh, sure, I do stuff like that all the time!" 

Don's my hero. 

(Pasty hot line numbers crossed out in the above photo to prevent a run on Don's wife's kitchen)

Sarah

Thursday, March 2, 2006

I talked to Nancy McRay today at Woven Art and she gave me step-by-step directions for over-dyeing Krystyna.  I'll have to work up the nerve (and get a few supplies), so stay tuned.  In the meantime, I have been wearing her a little bit.  She fits pretty darned well, if I may say so myself!  See?

I ended up cutting out the purl ridge I had inserted in the stockinette stitch hem, and pasting in a knit row to replace it (gotta love that kitchener stitch!).  Doing so eliminated most of the flare -- the machine washing at the end eliminated the rest.  I should have just stuck with the pattern as written, and I would have saved myself a lot of work (and finished much earlier on Sunday than I did).

Another change I made to the pattern was to cut the armholes in farther (further?).  I think I explained before that I ended up using a smaller gauge because I liked the look and feel of the fabric better, and therefore made the size large which worked out to the size of the medium (huh?).  I realized I wanted to make the shoulders narrower, though, so I continued decreasing for another inch or so on each side of the armhole.  Whether you understand that or not, let's just say that it worked, and the shoulders hit almost exactly where I wanted them to.  Whew!

So what's next?

Well, I finished the baby sweater for the Almanac-along, except for finding the perfect buttons.  I'll wait until they are found and attached before taking that sweater off of my on-the-needles list.

Next was a square for an afghan my local guild is making for the family of one of our members who passed away recently (from her stash):

Now I'm trying to finish up the sleeves on my Entrelac Cardigan.  After that, it'll just need some tail-weaving, some zipper-sewing, and a good blocking.

Wow, the flash made that sleeve look weird.

March's project in the Almanac-along is a "Difficult Sweater (Not Really)", although I'll be sticking with the swatch cap idea again.

I'm also thinking of jumping into Project Spectrum, which I could combine with the Almanac-along when feasible.

And I've STILL got knitting-for-hire projects that deserve my attention.

I've been poring through a lot of patterns lately, and wading through my stash for compatible yarns.  I want to start it all NOW!  This one-project-at-a-time thingy is tough, but I'm still hanging in there.  It's been four whole days! 

Torture!

Sarah

Sunday, February 26, 2006 (5:58 p.m.)

Well, she's done (although a little damp) . . .

 . . . unless you count the apparent dye lot issue visible in the chestal area (and on the back in about the same spot).  All balls were labeled with the same dye lot, although they were bought in two separate batches (at least a year apart).

I'm thinking of over-dyeing this sweater, which would be an additional challenge for me (not having done anything like that before).

LOVE the fabric and pattern, though (and the color, except for the evil stripe):

Krystyna and I went on the Guild's annual winter retreat this weekend, which was absolutely delightful.  tracy_a wore this sweater . . .

. . . which, she reminded me, was from my Sweater Design class, with tracy_a style variations which make it incredibly wonderful.  Isn't she talented?  Please pardon the extremely loud hotel bedspread in the background.

Well, I think it's high time I treat myself to knitting with something other than sport weight linen.  I hear the last few inches of a cute little orange baby sweater in a cushy soft wool calling my name . . .

Sarah

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