Since I am still only spinning the lace yarn for the shawlette I’d like to design, I have been lying awake in the dark thinking of how to execute said design. Some things have been hard to figure out just in my head and will need to be put on paper to see how the mechanics will actually work out. Some things I think of then forget as I drift off to sleep, leaving me only to wake up in the morning knowing I had a solution and it’s gone.
One of the mathematical things I’ve been working on is the fact that the lace pattern I have chosen is an even stitch number stitch pattern. Most shawls started at the top, as I want to start this one, tend to have an odd number of stitches in between the edge stitches and the center stitch. Last night, I believe I worked out how to jigger it, now I just need to find out if it’ll look alright.
Meanwhile, the sock design I began working on in June is slowly making progress. I finished the first sock only to discover that even though I had gotten gauge in my swatch, I lost a whole stitch per inch when knitting the sock. Eight stitches per inch is quite a bit different that 9 stitches per inch, especially in stretchy 2×2 ribbing. So, I’m working the second sock on needles that are half a millimeter smaller. The unfortunate part is I really liked how the color of the yarn worked out in the larger gauge, and in the smaller gauge it’s spiraling. The little bit of fancy stitch patterning it has is an 11 stitch repeat, so not much I can do there to play with fit. Just have to live with the change in color patterning.
Having too many options always seems to make decisions more difficult. The days are ticking by on the 4 ounce challenge (deadline is Sept 30). I don’t have any fiber from Hello Yarn or Southern Cross Fibre, but I do have plenty of Spunky Eclectic fiber to choose from. That’s part of the problem. Well, that, and not even being able to decide what kind of pattern I want to try to come up with. Socks are always fun… so is lace… ooo, what about a cowl? If I can’t even settle on what it is I’m going to make, how can I pick the right fiber for the project?
The top fiber in the running is a Spunky Club offering from last year – Selfish in Shetland. I’m also considering the newest shipment, which I can’t give details on yet. The nice thing about the Selfish is that it’s all set to go. When I received it last year, I split it up and pre-drafted it. So, it’s ready to spin. I’m also finding the maroon, orange, and green combination appealing. I think I’ll aim for a 2-ply laceweight yarn as I’m considering knitting something like a cowl or shawlette.
Off to ponder…
Am I going crazy? I feel like I’m trying to do too many things at once. I have a baby blanket to finish. I’m working on a pair of socks I’ve designed as well as working out another design that’s come to mind. I’m thinking of participating in the Spunky Eclectic/Hello Yarn/Southern Cross Fibres 4 Ounce Challenge! (spin 4 oz. of one of their fibers and design something using the yarn in 2 months). And I may be about to join a KAL knitting the Annis shawl from Knitty with some of my handspun (this one is crazy cause you have to cast on 360 stitches).
I keep wanting to work on all sorts of different things, and yet, I’m not knitting very much. In the evening, I sit on the couch catching up on the TiVo, and I think to myself that I should knit or spin. Do I do either? No. I continue to sit there just watching TV. Then, of course, when there are things I have to do (e.g., work), I just want to go home and knit. It sort of feels like my internal clock is off, like jet lag. As if I’m hungry and sleepy at all the wrong times, but for knitting and spinning and work.
I guess I’ll just try to buckle down and see if I can get something done, anything.
I apologize right up front to anyone who visited my bog in the last month and found it redirecting them to some stupid, fake “anti-virus” site. My blog was somehow hijacked, and a script was inserted in every. single. frikken. post. Thankfully, my server host provided me with a SQL statement to run against my database to clean out the script. And I wasn’t affected by any of the other hijacking symptoms that were possible. I’ve backed up and upgraded, so hopefully, this won’t happen again. I have plans for backing up more often and keeping on top of making sure I upgrade in a timely manner.
In other circles, I completely failed at Tour de Fleece. I spun for the first three days, then I hurt my back and didn’t get my wheel out for the rest of the tour. On the upside, I did manage to get the singles for a 3-ply yarn spun, just need to find the time to ply it up and see if my experiment to try getting a specific type of yarn worked.
I’ve been knitting, working on a baby blanket for my niece, who should be joining us in October. I’m also working on designing a pair of socks. This isn’t the first time I’ve created my own pattern, but it is the first time I’ve done something more than just stockinette or ribbing. I’ve actually put some thought into it. It’s been fun enough that I’m already thinking of a second pattern for the first installment of the Mean Girls Yarn Club, Part Deux that I just received.
I finally just pulled out the purple sweater and ripped the sucker out. Now you see it…
Now you don’t…
One piece of advice. No matter how nice a sewn cast-off looks, I don’t recommend it if you ever plan on ripping it out. That took for…… ever….. But, once I got the cast-offs out I made quick work of the sweater with my ball winder. Only occasionally hit a few snags due to the alpaca in the yarn. The stockinette parts were much easier to rip out than the seed stitch borders. There were a few places were the yarn caught and broke, so I do have a couple smaller balls. What was really nice is once I got the yarn reskeined and into the bath, it came out beautifully. You would never know that it had been previously knitted.
Now, I just need to knit up a swatch to determine needles and size to be knit. New sweater here I come!
I have been contemplating ripping out my 2006 Olympic sweater. I had knit Knitting Pure & Simple’s Neckdown V-Neck Shaped Cardigan in Rowan Felted Tweed. Amazing enough I managed to finish it in the 16 days of the Olympics, thus winning myself a gold medal (unlike this last time when failed miserably). Here’s a terrible cell phone picture of it the first time I wore it.
It was a nice enough sweater, but it had some problems. The sleeves, although I had measured them diligently and multiple times, came out short. The confusing part there is they are the length of other sleeves I have worn (I had measured a sweater I liked), and yet when I wear it the sleeves are too short. The sweater length could be a little longer, too. There is way too much fabric in the underarms, and yet, somehow, not quite enough for the bust. I’ve also never been happy with the bottom portion of the sleeves — I didn’t switch from the circular needle to DPNs at the right time and there’s a section of knitting that is wonky with stretched out stitches. But, most importantly, I just don’t wear it anymore because of all of these problems.
I still have 4 unused balls of the Felted Tweed that I didn’t use when knitting this sweater. Not enough for a sweater on their own. But, if I were to rip out this poor, sad, old sweater to add to the unused balls, I do believe I would have enough yarn to knit myself a Tempest. This would be good, because I need a nice, simply cardigan that fits to wear for work. (I have my Ribby Cardi and my Mr. Greenjeans, but they both need repairs and are showing some age; plus both are raglans, which I am beginning to believe are not a good fit for me.)
I have been inspired by Deb’s recent reknit. I want to give this good yarn a happier future (and myself a wearable sweater). It might even give me something to blog about. 
No progress to see here; please move along. I have been so tired from slinging boxes at work the last few days that I’m unable to bring myself to even knit in the evening. So, my Ishbel and my spinning both sit where they were at the beginning of the week. The Ishbel may actually get finished since I just have the lace section left to do.
Tomorrow is for Stitches West. I’ve signed up for Janel Laidman’s Getting the Most from a Painted Roving. It goes all day on Friday, so hopefully, by the end of the day I should have some idea of what to do with the handpainted fibers I have slowly piling up in my fiber room.
I plan on just having lunch at the bar/restaurant in the hotel so that I don’t have to drive anywhere. Then, into the market. I’m not planning on returning for the rest of the weekend, so all shopping needs to be done during my lunch break and after class ends. This year’s shopping theme is going to be tools/books. I was in my fiber room cleaning it up so my BIL could stay the night and realized I truly do have quite a lot of fiber and yarn and no time to do anything with it. (And I just got into The Loopy Ewe’s sock club for this year and am considering signing up for another year of infliction sock yarn from the Mean Girls Yarn Club.) So, something will have to be truly amazing for me to think about getting it if it isn’t a tool or a book.
I also have the mission to buy a couple of skeins of sock yarn and a sock book for my MIL’s birthday, which is in a couple of months. She’s getting back into knitting and the pair of socks I knit for her has inspired her to have more handknit socks of her own. I think I’m going to get her a skein from Abstract Fibers and perhaps one from either Pigeonroof or Lisa Souza; I like the idea of getting her something rather local. The book I’m thinking of getting her is Nancy Bush’s Knitting Vintage Socks. I think she’ll like the historical connection as well as the simple, but pretty patterns in the book.
I’m not entirely sure where my Ravelry name pin has gotten too; I’ll have to see if I can find it. I do plan on wearing my Brandywine shawl tomorrow so that I can show it off to Romi in person. See you there!
Time flies when life is crazy. International travel followed by the introduction of a new family member (see right) along with the stress of an archival collection move to prepare for at work has kept the days rolling by without note here. But, mostly, the addition of a puppy has taken up most of my time. There hasn’t even been a lot of knitting, and there’s been no spinning since we got her in October.
Her name is Lily, and we got her from a rescue that takes dogs out of kill shelters in SoCal and brings them north for adoption. Lily’s mom was the one actually rescued and then discovered to be pregnant. Mom was a white cockapoo, and there have been many guesses as to what dad may have been. The general consensus is either wire-haired dachshund or some sort of terrier. Lily’s nickname is Troublebutt — she’s 7 months old as of last week and has been having loads of fun finding news things to make a mess of.
With the Winter Olympics (and thus Ravelympics and the Knitting Olympics) about to commence tonight, I thought it was time to do some spring cleaning in the old blog. I’ve done away with the large gathering of dust bunnies Russian spam and installed a shiny new post. Of course, I have no idea if there’s anyone out there still bothering to read.
Now to decide on projects. For the Ravelympics, I’m on Team Suck Less, and my project is going to be to spin for a complete project. I just haven’t decided yet if I will be spinning for socks or a lace shawl. Decisions, decisions. I have some superwash corriedale from Spunky Eclectic in a pretty colorway called Soul Windows that would make nice socks. But, I also have some Dark BFL also from Spunky Eclectic in a colorway called Myrtle that would make a pretty Bitterroot.
For the Knitting Olympics, I’ve put my name in and said I’d be knitting an Ishbel shawl with some of my handspun shetland romney laceweight yarn. (Oops, signed up saying it was shetland, oh well.) I haven’t really done a lot with my handspun yarn because I sometimes upset myself by only seeing the imperfections in the yarn as I’m knitting it rather than the loveliness of the project. So, my challenge is to knit a project with my handspun… and actually finish it.
Kathy in San Jose graciously sent me photos of my Rivendell socks that she took at Sock Summit. If you click on the photo it will take you to the larger photo at Flickr so you can see the sock information (if you can’t please let me know and I will see what I have to do to make that happen). I will clarify here that the yarn information was listed incorrectly. It should be Dream in Color Starry in the Grey Tabby colorway.
I’m really hoping they’ll find some way to get all the socks from the Sock Museum photographed and the information logged so that those of us who were unable to get to Sock Summit can get a good view of it, too.
Did anyone who went to Sock Summit 2009 go to the Sock Museum? Did you see my Rivendell socks? Did they look like they were having a good time? I thought it was pretty cool to find my Rivendells amongst the photos The Oregonian took of the event (the slideshow is halfway through the article).
I’m liking the Monkey socks I’m knitting for my sister. The pattern was super easy to memorize, and the colors are working really well with the simple lace. It’s also knitting up very quickly. The Laminaria shawl is slightly on-hold, meaning I just haven’t felt up to knitting it while watching TV the last few nights.
My 30 days of exercise project is almost over — tomorrow is day 30! The Monterey Wool Auction is on Sunday and I’m looking forward to see what fleeces are there this year. I think I will probably be continuing the exercise going forward. I have finally gotten to a point that while I still feel hot and sweaty afterwards, I also feel refreshed. And let me tell you, the biggest bonus is my clothes are fitting looser.
