yarn

Having an excessive stash of yarn is kinda like over eating: it happens when the eyes are bigger than your stomache…or in this case, the desire is bigger than the reality of what is possible. I’ve come to appreciate having a stash of yarn – there are times when either I finish a project or I’m just not “feeling” a project and need to cast on for something different. Having a nice and varied stash helps tremendously in those rare times.

It was with great reservation that I managed to survive the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival by purchasing only 5 skeins of yarn: 3 skeins of a lace weight for a project, one skein in “my” blue (yes, I know, I know…I have too much blue) and one skein of a tinsel yarn in…wait for it….in a RED/yellow/orange colorway, also earmarked for a specific project. So – basically yarn for 3 shawl projects. Of course these three shawl projects will take me the rest of my life…but, I purchased them anyway. I think I was splendidly conservative.

I also purchased a pair of these:

This is a pair of Signature Needle Arts circular needles. Kate has been very skeptical (mainly because the are pricey – this pair normally costs $42, but I purchased them for $38 at the Fair). We both like and use AddiTurbo needles – I prefer the Addi Lace – but Addi’s have been our standard go-to needle. How do these compare? Well, I think the cable on the SNAs is much more flexible. Plus, the cable is independent of the needles, which means if the cable gets a little kink in it, you can simply twist the cable and not the needle to get the kink out – kinda helpful when you have tons of stitches on the needle itself. Plus these come with LOTS of options: you can choose the point (stiletto or normal), the length of the needle itself (on circulars they come in 4-, 5-, and 6-inch needles) and the length of the cable. Now, to be fair, the Addi’s come with options for the tip (Lace or regurlar) and the length of the cable, but NOT the length of the needle. So if you are like me and have smaller hands, the smaller needles will work splendidly. On the other hand, if you prefer a longer needle, well, they have options for that as well.

As to how the knit – like a dream. My yarn is not too slippery on them (on regular Addi’s my yarn tends to be very slippery, not as much with the Lace Addi’s because the lace needles are made differently). But the main selling point for me is that the needles themselves feel lighter to me than the Addi’s. I don’t know – the differences are, in some cases, minute, but the minutiae adds up. These are going to be a favorite with me. Now if I could just afford another pair…..

recovery and preparation

I’m back from my Maryland trip…and oh, what a trip it was! I don’t have the time to fully update everyone on the weekend, but let’s just say that it accomplished several things:

1. I purchased a set of needles that I’ve been coveting wanting for a while now. The company had a booth at the Fare and so had the opportunity to try them out first. Awesome!
2. I didn’t (much) think about work – making this a true vacation.
3. I felt rejuvenated.
4. I got some knitting done. Not that you could really tell..my current project consists of miles and miles of stockinette stitch…truly a boring and mindless knitting pattern.

And as much fun as I had IN Maryland, the trip there and back was NOT fun. Both trips required a plane change in Philadelphia…and both were a challenge. We nearly missed both flights. No kidding. On the way home we were so late that I was running… in the only way that a knee-challenged, overweight, luggage dragging, tote bag carrying person can run. It was not pretty and it was not fun. But we made it.

I was hoping that yesterday would be recovery day, and it was, to a degree. I had to do some grocery shopping after work, and then I went home and crashed. Today, here are my tasks:

1. Go to church after work and build the visuals file for Sunday.
2. Go home and do a load (or two) of laundry.
3. Mow my yard. (My poor, pathetic yard.)
4. Pack.

So it looks like I will have no rest until next week. But that’s okay, I’m young, right?

strange yet interesting

Someone told me recently that I’m a little strange, yet interesting. I’m not sure how to take this, really. Is it a compliment? I hope so, at least that is how I choose to interpret the comment. This came on the heels of my explanation of what I’m doing this weekend – going to Maryland for a “knitting retreat” (of sorts). It is not really a retreat, and yet it is. I’ll be gone 5 days and activities will include knitting, meeting a woman who built her own spinning wheel, volunteering and then working at the 40th Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival and who knows what else! Strange? Perhaps. Interesting? Definitely!

The hardest part of going on a weekend like this is packing. How much? How little? Carry on? If so, will I have room for purchases? If not, what do I carry? Clothing? I’m tracking the weather very closely and it looks to be good weather, so I think we’ll be thankful for that.

As to knitting projects…I need to take something that can be knit with minimal concentration, and perhaps something a little more complicated, but whatever I take I need to make sure I have enough of it.

I’ve got my dollar limit for the weekend, and some ideas for what I would like to purchase, so that is all set.

My class ended today so I’m a free woman to ponder these things!

elements of design

I’m currently knitting a shawl – something simple for the office, nothing special – but I’m making it up as I go. I’ve never done this before in knitting and even when I’ve tried to alter a pattern I’ve gotten myself into trouble. So it is with *much* trepidation that I even consider making it up as I go, but here I am, doing it anyway. The premise of the shawl is simple – simple raglan increases with a length that will cover my arms. This last part is important to me because I’m always cold in my office – summer, spring, fall and winter – and I do a LOT of typing, you know, being a computer programmer and all, so my arms are always on the desk, exposed. Winter is not a big deal because I wear long sleeves, but in the summer, well, let’s just say that I need to cover them up – no way am I going to wear a sweater/long sleeves in the summer just because I am cold in my office. No way.

I bought this yarn about 7-8 years ago to make another shawl that, let’s just say, got frogged. (This is a long story, but what I will say is that I saw this shrug in a magazine and *really* wanted to knit it, but it was charted and I had never read a chart before and, well, I sort of read it backwards and the cables didn’t look right. after about 15 inches of knitting I finally gave up and frogged.) Anyway, I have 4 skeins of this yearn in Chino and 3 skeins in Indigo. It is a soft acrylic yarn, worsted weight that I think will be perfect for office stuff. I won’t care too much about it if something happens to it, yet it should keep me warm.

So, I’m knitting away on this simple raglan shawl when I decide that I want both the Chico and Indigo colors in the shawl. Now there are probably a million ways that I could do this, but after thinking about it for a while, this is what I have come up with.

Now this seems like a fairly simple stripe pattern, but let me tell you, it has caused much consternation in my life. Trying to get the stripes to gradually increase/decrease evenly has been a challenge. But I think I’ve finally done it, and I am nearly into the solid blue section. Now, I’m realizing that I might want to do this again towards the bottom so that the top and bottom are in the Chino color with the center being the blue. Oy-vey. Designing knit wear is hard.

getting ready for a trip

Wow, how lacking in posts this blog is! I’ve been, ah, a wee bit “otherwise engaged” for a few weeks. I finally had the flu – I say finally because I haven’t had the flu in something like 8 years (I kid you not!) and so I was probably long overdue for some illness. It is no fun, I tell you, no fun at all, being sick by yourself. I think I spent the total of 60 hours in bed for the first 72 hours. But I am better, now, thank you for asking.

I haven’t knit much lately, not only because I’ve been sick, but also because I am trying to finish up my final project for school, which is due next Monday. After Monday I am a free woman, at least until my next class. I’m trying to get the project finished by Friday so that I can actually enjoy my weekend. I’m going to take Bug to see Jurassic Park in 3D on Saturday, and then on Sunday after church I’m going to a birthday party for my cousin’s daughter, whom I have been neglectful of for about 18 months. Then I have class on Monday and then the rest of the week I’ll be counting down to Friday, when K2Frog2 and I will be boarding a (very) early plane to see TinkerBell. Maryland, here we come!

Five days of knitting overload…and I am SO looking forward to it. Good food, good company, good knitting – who wouldn’t love a weekend like this! Plus, we’ll be going to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. Bonus!

So you’ll just have to stay tuned until next weekend when I have lots and lots of posts from the knitter’s weekend!

congratulations K1Frog2!

Kate has been working for about a year to become a Master Knitter (personally, I’ve always though of her as a master knitter…). And guess what? SHE PASSED! She can now, officially, wear this:

That is the Master Knitter pin from The Knitting Guild of America – the tester and protector of all master knitters…

I have a strong appreciation for what she has learned – the Master’s program is not just about how to knit…it is about HOW TO KNIT – all the technical details of things such as, but not limited to, questions like: how do you maintain even rows/stitches when you are using a combination of knit and purl stitches? A problem I definitely have.

She had to do research, write an essay and knit several swatches ( a few of which were returned and she was asked to do again). Kate has learned much about the professional and technical side of knitting and I stand in awe of her!

Congratulations, Kate! Job well done!

the value of washing swatches

Two years ago I met Ralene, the owner of a Jacob Sheep farm in Hanover, PA. My friend, TinkerBell, works with Ralene at a small college nearby, and we (K1Frog2 and I) were invited to see the sheep. Jacobs are a rare breed in that they are the only spotted sheep breed. They are said to get their name from a story in Genesis chapter 30 where Jacob asks Laban, his father-in-law, for all the “spotted calves and spotted sheep”. Regardless of their origen, they are cute little buggers:

We just happened to visit a mere 3 days after Ralene’s last female gave birth to twins – can you imagine? Three-day-old twin sheep? They were absolutely adorable!

And while we where there, Ralene put us to work. We tagged all her yarn that she was taking to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival for her to sell, and for that we were compensated with these:

Two cones of Jacob fingering weight yarn! I’ve held onto these for two years and I think I need to finally knit them up into something…but I was having a terrible time thinking of what I could knit them into. If you felt this yarn, you would probably think “yuck!” – it is a bit stiff and, uh, let’s just say not the most pleasant of all yarns. But, being dutiful, I knit up a little swatch anyway just to see what the fabric would be like.

I knit half with size 5 needles and half with size 4 – doing both a garter stitch and a stockinette stitch. Still not convinced about this yarn, I then washed the swatch.

Night and Day difference! The unwashed swatch is on the left and the washed one is on the right. Can you see that the one on the right is a little fuzzier? It is a little softer in its stitch definition and oh, so MUCH softer! Now *this* is a yarn I could go crazy for!

So…what am I doing to do with it? Well, since I have plenty of yarn (probably around 1500 yards), I’m going to knit a lace shawl. The yarn should give a really nice definition for lace and be soft enough to wear on my arms. And this will be a shawl for moi!

indecision

I need to start a new project but I’m facing a bit of indecision – I can’t decide what to do.

On the one hand I have promised a certain niece a poncho. I have a pattern, I have the yarn. I have the needles.

On the other hand, I have a shawl in progress – I obviously have the yarn, I obviously have the needles, but, I’m making up the pattern as I go.

On the other hand, I have a shawl in progress – again, have the pattern, yarn and needles – but the pattern is lace and requires extreme concentration.

On the other hand, I have socks in progress. Boring and repetitive.

On the other hand, I have numerous patterns in my queue, and even in certain cases yarn to go with them, but they require the gumption to get started, which is more energy than I seem to be able to muster at the moment.

*sigh*

What to do…what to do.

the art of frogging

Since I finished the Sunset and now have some time for a new project, I thought I would go through my WIP bin (work in progress). I was itching for a lace project and – whoopee – I found this:

It is a wonderful sky-blue (which does not show up AT ALL in these photos) cotton and it looks as though I’ve already done a fair amount of knitting on it. If memory serves, I was getting that pattern down well and was rocking and rolling on it.

So I pulled out the pattern (that you can see in the top part of that image) and was trying to figure out where I had left off. I’m usually very good about marking my place and counting rows and such, thankfully. I was re-reading the instructions and then it dawned on me. Something was wrong. Here is a black and white of what the shawl *should* look like:

Can you spot the problem? No? Let me show you:

Hm…see it now? Yes, I appear to be missing a section. I have absolutely no idea how this happened. None. I counted the stitches on each side of my shawl and they exactly match – exactly, mind you – the count of where I indicated on the pattern that I had left off. Really, I don’t know what happened. I’m sure that I was knitting this pattern – I’m sure I have the correct pattern in mind and what I had knit really does look like the top part of this shawl. I just don’t know what happened to the third part.

*sigh* This is what happens, people, when you start a project and then let it linger for, oh, six months or more. Don’t Let This Happen To You! Finish those WIPs!

I even had a lovely little lifeline inserted where I had left off:

*sigh* Oh well.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrripit……….rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrripit

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrripit……rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrripit

oops…tangle.

This is NOT what you are supposed to do when you frog – it took me a while to get that one worked out, but in the end, the whole thing got frogged.

The only good thing about this process last night is now I get to go in search for a new pattern! Yey! And it feels as though I just purchased new yarn – bonus!

biscuits and Sunsets

I had a “first” over the weekend – I made biscuits from scratch. Oooo-la-la. Yes, I know. I purchased a $1.99 Southern Biscuit cookbook from Amazon and have been reading up on this fair art, but my recipe in Saturday came from here. The Smitten Kitchen is a blog that I read and she has lots of interesting recipes with lots and lots of pictures, which is what I like. She’s been raving about this recipe for years now, so I decided to give it a try.

The one thing you DON’T want to know about this recipe is that it calls for…9T of butter. Yes, NINE TABLESPOONS of butter. I had to purchase a pastry cutter just so this would turn out correctly.

My one problem with the dough was that it wasn’t moist enough. I don’t think I fluffed the flour enough – probably should have sifted it first – and so it came out a little too dense and I ended up adding about a 1/4 c more buttermilk than the recipe called for. Lesson learned.

But they sure came out wonderfully tasty! Yum, yum!

Now, in other news, the Sunset is finally finished!

I used my wire blockers to block this and I think it turned out well! It ended up being so large that I had to pull a footstool over so that I could pin it to something – you can see this in the photo above. It turned out to be a really nice size that I think my mom will like. Here’s an up-close shot.