Vaycay

Vacation.  Finally.  Although of course by the time I get around to writing a new post, my vacation is almost over.  It's been fairly busy though!  The first 5 days or so were spent in Minneapolis with the Enabler, and after getting back home I was so excited to be back home with the cats and my spinning wheel and homemade food that I kind of just hibernated for a few days, and blogging was nowhere on my mind.

Not that Minneapolis wasn't great, because it totally was!  I rarely go on vacation to a place where I could see myself living, but I could definitely see myself living in Minneapolis, if it weren't for the fact that it's not in Canada.  But we can't fault it for that.

We went to a number of amazing restaurants, went to a Twins game, the "premium outlet mall" in Albertville, and even *gasp* the Mall of America, and I loved every bit of it.  We walked through downtown many times, walked through the sculpture garden, spent all of our money (and then some), and basically had a lovely time.  I didn't take that many pictures because I so rarely do anything with my (non knitting related) pictures that it just wasn't worth spending my vacation behind a camera lens this time.  I did take a few though, here are some of my favourites:

Minnesota: #1 in voter fraud.

Target Field.  The Twins lost to the Chicago White Sox 9-2.  We had fun anyway.

On the roof of Brit's Pub, beside the rooftop lawn bowling green.

A cinnamon twist and a maple bacon long john from Yo-Yo's Donuts.
Holy.  Crap.

The Enabler showing off his impressive lung capacity.

Knitbomb found on the bridge close to the sculpture garden.

Size 75 (35 mm) knitting needles at StevenBe, otherwise known as "Yarnia" (according to one of the lovely employees that I spoke with).

Oh that's right, I went to StevenBe as well.  We parked in front, followed the signs around to the back, walked through a small room containing above couch and knitting needles, as well as some various knitting bags, and stepped through a small door into one of the largest yarn stores I've ever been in.  Shelves of wool stretched from floor to (very high) ceiling, and there was another square of shelves centred around the middle of the room, which contained numerous chairs for sitting and knitting.  There was even coffee.  The Enabler followed me around for a little while before settling into one of the chairs for the wait so that I could pile yarn on him as needed.  I circled the shop a number of times, picking things up and putting them back down, not able to make a decision in the face of so much choice.  I was offered help by at least three separate employees, one of whom gave me a tour of the store, told me where everything was, and directed me to a few shop exclusives.  I mainly wanted to get things that I couldn't get at home, and so after a few more rounds of the shop I did manage to make some decisions.  I came away with a few local yarns as well as a skein of Three Irish Girls in a colourway exclusive to the shop, and maybe one or two others that were just too pretty to resist.  There was also an amazing selection of fibre, so I ended up getting some of that as well.  Surprised?  Me neither.

On the left is some Polworth top that the Enabler picked up for me in Seattle a couple of months ago (but I hadn't shown off yet), colourway is Blue Lagoon.  On the right is the merino roving that I got at StevenBe, colourway is Toucan.  I can't wait to spin these!

I'll be honest though, I haven't worked up the nerve to spin anything variegated that I REALLY like yet.  I've only spun up some of that giant bag of fleece (which takes a lot of work since it has to be hand carded before it can be spun), and a bit of Corriedale top that I got at my LYS.  I picked this up a little while ago since I was tired of only spinning purple, and when I saw the colours lying next to each other up on the shelf I just about had an aneurysm.

These need to be striped.  Seriously.

So I've been working on spinning that up, partly as practice and partly because it looks awesome, and maybe soon I'll get the cajones to dive into the super nice stuff!  I just don't want to muck them up, so I've been debating with myself how I should try spinning them, whether I want to try to keep the colours together or if I should try fractal spinning.  I also want to start working on making a thicker yarn, but I think I'll use practice fleece for that.

Oh, in case you were worried that I didn't do much knitting on my vacation, I also finished the Clapotis for myself out of tosh merino light.  I hearts it.  I am wearing it right now.  I may not ever take it off.

Yep.  It's good.

Sweaterday

I should probably change the name of my blog to "Infrequent Confessions of a Lazy Wooloholic" since I've been such a terrible blogger lately.  It was summer though.  I'm allowed to slack off in summer, right?  Now that it's September it's time to knuckle down and hit the books, metaphorically speaking.  September hasn't felt much different than August to me for awhile now.  The only difference is that work gets busier, people come back from their holidays, and I can smell sweater weather coming just around the corner.

I'll be honest with you, I like summer, but frankly I'm pretty tired of it.  I like hot weather, but the heat is so much more enjoyable when there's a cooler stretch here and there to break it up.  I love wearing sun dresses, but I also love wearing jeans and a sweater.  The two days during the last few months when it was actually cool enough to wear jeans and a sweater, I was relieved to be able to cover up a bit, however briefly.

I started getting excited for sweater weather a month ago already, and to indulge this excitement, when friends of ours had a baby boy at the end of July I decided the perfect present would be a tiny sweater.  I'd never made a tiny sweater before but I think they're just adorable.  After gushing over dozens of patterns on ravelry I settled on Little Coffee Bean, which is a free pattern and basically the cutest little sweater ever.  I didn't know right away what colours I wanted to make it, but I knew I wanted to do something other than blue, since I don't think that every little boy needs to wear blue.  I even toyed with the idea of pink and blue stripes just to confuse people.  The yarn called for in the pattern is Berroco Vintage, and my LYS is totally stocked with that kind of yarn so I knew having good colour options wouldn't be an issue.

By the time I got around to buying yarn for it, the baby shower was a week away.  I didn't really think I needed to have it done in time for the shower, but the colours were so great that I wound the yarn and cast on almost as soon as I got home from the yarn store.  It knit up pretty quickly and two evenings later I had made some good progress.

I knit it during my lunches, on the bus rides home from work, and a bit in the evenings, and I managed to finish everything but sewing on the buttons with three days to spare.

I didn't think it was possible for anything to be cuter than this sweater.  That is, until I added the buttons.

Totes adorbs.  The worst part of it is was having to give it away.  I am hoping to get a picture of the baby wearing the sweater, as that may help to ease the pain of separation I am still experiencing, but unfortunately the sweater isn't going to fit him for a few months yet.  Why can't babies grow faster?

Then I reminded myself that the Enabler continues to very much live up to his nickname, as he went to Seattle on business and came back with this for me for my birthday (amongst other things but this is all I took a picture of).

That's two skeins of tosh merino light in the steam age colourway.  They are well on their way to becoming a clapotis for me.  Well you didn't think that I was going to make one for my mom, and then not make one for myself, did you?  I'm hoping to have it finished before the cooler weather starts in earnest.  I'll be honest, I like fall and winter more since I became a more avid (obsessive) knitter.  A hand knitted scarf/hat/pair of mittens really helps take the edge off.

Spinning is going pretty well, and I'm getting better at hand-carding fleece into rolags.  They're kinda fun to make, and Olivia likes them too.

Really though, they're going to have cat hair in them anyway, might as well embrace it.

I got fleeced

Just in case anyone was getting concerned that I was getting too obsessed with knitting, that I wasn't spending enough time doing other things with my life, and it was getting to be somewhat unhealthy, not to worry!  I haven't been knitting as much lately.  I've still been knitting some things, but I haven't been picking up the needles every day like I used to.

Of course, that's because I've been developing another obsession which has been taking up my time.  It's not exactly a new obsession, it's about two months old, however I haven't been able to indulge and nurture it until now.

That's right friends, I have acquired a spinning wheel.  It's a Louet Julia S11, it's nearly silent, totally smooth, has virtually no dead spot when treadling, and it's completely lovely.  I had decided after the spinning class that I wanted a Louet, and Francine, the instructor of the class (who I also ordered the wheel through), suggested this one.  She had never actually spun with it but had heard good things.  It was definitely the right decision for me.

I picked it up last week Saturday, just before planning to head to my parents place for the weekend.  I couldn't bear the thought of leaving the wheel all alone in a new scary place, so I took it with me.

The wheel came with 225 grams of creamy Romney comb top, which I thought was very considerate of them.  It would be very frustrating to have a wheel and have nothing to spin!  I started out with it as my practice fiber.  By the end of the first evening I had made about 95 yards of yarn that is, I think, roughly sport weight.  I don't know if there's any way to measure the weight of yarn you make.  Probably, I just haven't checked yet.

Spinnen mit Romney

This is great practice fibre.  It spins easily and there's lots of it, however the finished product is pretty rough.  Not something I'd want to wear next to my skin.  Maybe a hat or pair of mittens or something, but even that I'm not sure.  It might be how I'm spinning it, or maybe that's just how this fibre is.  Regardless, it's for practice!

I also bought a bag of Polwarth Elite fine show fleece that Francine and her daughter had dyed.  The whole bag is 700 grams which doesn't sound like much but it's quite a lot.  The colorway is Wild Berries and I think it's just lovely.

As this is still fleece it is not quite ready for spinning and must be prepared which is a little bit of work, but not actually that bad.  First I have to pick out individual locks in the colours that I want, then pull them apart to release some of the vegetable matter that's still in it.  After that it has to be carded (combed) so that it can be spun.  I practiced hand carding and flick carding and spun it all into this:

It's about 90 yards of sportish weight, and somewhat softer than the Romney.  Not quite enough to do anything with, but I do have a LOT left to spin!  I can't spin as much as I can knit though.  I don't have a perfect chair for spinning, and it's hard on the arms to do for more than a few hours at a time.  I'm finding that having a good spinning session every other day or every few days is working fairly well.  It gives enough time for the arm to feel better, and allows the skills acquired to settle a little bit.  I'm aiming to achieve fingering weight yarn soon.  I think I'm getting close...

Bloody lovely

Some time ago Helen gave me a skein of pink sweetgeorgia merino silk lace. The colourway was "oxblood", but I think it would have been more appropriately named "candyblood" or something. I don't know what kind of oxen they have in Vancouver, but where I come from their blood ain't pink.

Alright fine, so I've never seen actual ox blood, so technically I don't really know what colour it is, unless the colour is in reference to something other than literally the blood of an ox. Is it a flower or something? If so, then who named the flower?  Any way you spin it, people who come up the colour names have got to be a few stitches short of a sweater.

So, back to the point. This yarn was beautiful, but I couldn't see myself wearing anything made with it. Then my mom saw it and loved it, so of course I knew I had to make her something with it. Thus began the search for the perfect pattern.

I wanted to make a lacy stole that my mom could wear in the summer. There is no end to lacy stole patterns, and narrowing it down was tough.  I didn't want anything too lacy or traditional looking (read: old fashioned) because although my mom may be retired, she's no old lady.  Finally I found one I liked, the Nefertiti wrap. So I bought and downloaded the pattern, opened it up, and balked when I saw the number of pages and lace charts involved.  The pattern is 15 pages long.  There are 18 different lace charts. This was not the lovely and interesting (but relaxing) spring knitting I had envisioned, so that idea was scrapped before I could even muster up a cast on.

Next I found the Seascape Shawl. Pretty and fairly simple compared to the Nefertiti wrap, so I cast on right away.  All was well.

That is, until I spread it out to look at how the pattern was developing.

Do you see it?

Alright fine, since apparently part of my mind never left junior high, I looked at this lovely wrap and all I could see was boobs.  Maybe it was partially the colour, since I didn't notice it in the pattern, and while I'm all for support of breast cancer research, I didn't think I needed to give my mom a giant breast cancer ribbon.  I pointed it out to all of my knitting friends and they agreed with me, so I knew it had to go.  There's a chance that had I kept knitting this, the overwhelming boobage would have disappeared, but once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it.  I didn't even want to finish knitting the pair.

So the boob scarf got frogged and I was back to square one.  Except that fortunately by this point I had a pretty good idea of what was out there and what I didn't want.  So I went even simpler, and decided to knit my mom something that I'd been planning to make for myself but just don't have the right yarn for it yet.  I picked the Clapotis and before I even cast on, I knew this was the right choice.

It was a wonderfully simple, relaxing, rhythmic knit.  Although, I admit, rather time consuming.  700 yards of lace weight takes a long time to knit no matter what the pattern is.  Once it was finished though, I didn't even have to block it since the drape was already amazing.  So I guess that was a time-saver?

I think my mom likes it, although I don't think she's worn it yet, what with the never-ending heat wave. If she doesn't end up wearing it though, maybe I'll take it back.  I can over-dye it or something.

;)

The dream that was almost a nightmare

In my last post I mentioned that I had finally found a pattern that I deemed worthy of my Handmaiden Sea Silk, the Sweet Dreams shawl by Boo Knits.  If you take a look at this yarn, and if you've ever had the pleasure of holding it, you'll know why I was hoarding it, and definitely why I wanted something that I could wear around my neck/shoulders.

It's so shiny and soft!  SO PRETTY...

Ahem.  What I mean is that after my last post I finally managed to get my hands on some appropriate beads, which was easier said than done.  Because as soon as I realized that I wanted this shawl, I wanted it pretty much like yesterday, and even that wasn't soon enough.  I booted up Google and found a few bead stores in the city.  There was no way I was going to order beads online, I couldn't wait that long!  The first store had a ton of beads, and a number of beads in the size that I wanted, but none in the right colour and shape that were actually in stock (and the lady who did the ordering had just left for vacation for two weeks... again I'll say that there was no way I could wait that long).

I'm going to interrupt myself here and say that I am not generally a blingy sort of person.  I appreciate a bit of sparkle, but I didn't want the beads to stand out.  I wanted to just be there and blend in and add a little bit of interest.  After all, this was my first beading project and I didn't want to go overboard.  There are definitely more beads in my future, and I may work up to a bit more bling but for now I was going for understated.  Besides, the yarn is just so gorgeous that I didn't want to distract from it!

Anyhoo, the next two bead stores were underwhelming and still didn't have what I wanted.  So I resigned myself to checking out the selection at Michael's, and sure enough, they had exactly what I was looking for.  Go figure.  Size 6/0 glass matte grey/brown beads with just a touch of sheen that blended in perfectly with the yarn.  I raced home and whipped through the lace part of the shawl so fast that I hardly even remember doing it.  There was some brief hesitation when I was trying to decide if I should try to do a second lace repeat but I decided against it.  I really couldn't think of anything that would be worse (knitting-related, I'm not completely insane) than getting 20 stitches away from the end and running out of yarn.  My one (small) regret is not knitting the medium size from the start.  I would definitely have had enough yarn for it, but that's alright. Knit and learn!

The picot edging bind-off took an insane amount of time.  I'd heard other knitters say that it takes a long time and also takes a lot of yarn, but I thought surely they were exaggerating.  Last Tuesday when I came home from work I had plans to finish up the shawl that evening so I could get it blocking.  I only had 4 rows left of the lace and the edging to do.  I didn't take into consideration the extra beading that was part of the last couple of rows, and by the end of the evening I had finished the lace but only just started the bind off.  Wednesday night I thought for sure I was going to get it done.  I only had the bind off!  How long could it take?  Well by the end of the night I was halfway done and I was pretty sure that I was going to be binding off this shawl until the end of time.

Thursday was crunch time, since I needed to start blocking it Thursday to make sure that it would be wearable to a friend's wedding on Saturday night, and even that amount of time laughing in the face of Helen's 72-hour rule.  It was do or die.

Well, I did, and by 9:30 in the evening I had it pinned out on a towel in the office and it was stunning.  Perfect.  I didn't even mind that it was the small size and I had 30 grams of yarn left that I now had to figure out what to do with.  It looked just right and I loved every single silky soft stitch.  I stood there and admired it for awhile before sighing happily, turning out the light, and closing the door.

I have to block things in the office because it's the only room in the house with a door that I can leave closed.  If I don't confine it to this space, I know for certain that my cats, who love knitting, will lie on it and who knows what else.  This method has worked well for me so far.  I checked on it on Friday morning and it was still dampish.  I checked on it again Friday evening before going to bed and it was pretty much dry but I wanted to make totally sure so I left it alone.

Saturday morning I woke up and walked into the living room and saw that the office door was open.  I immediately (in my head) blamed the Enabler, and I asked him if he'd been in the office this morning, and he said no.  I asked him if he'd been in the office last night, and he said no he hadn't been in there at all.  Okay, so I guess I must have closed the door and not quite latched it and the cats pushed their way in.  It's probably fine, right?  I went in to the office and saw that sure enough, there were pins sticking every which way and the shawl and towel were scrunched over into a pile.  This is when my heart started really racing.  I quickly crouched down and spread it out, picking out the pins as I went, surveying every inch of it to make sure that all the stitches were still in the right place.  Nothing seemed wrong with the lace section, and then I saw it:

Right at the top of the plain stockinette section, a little off to the side, there was a long loop where a stitch used to be, and a couple of inches of teeny tiny stitches on either side of it.  My racing heart stopped, and I almost burst into tears but luckily my rational self reminded my emotional self that I'm pretty handy with a crochet hook.  I can save a dropped stitch, so why can't I pull a line of stitches back into place?  The important thing was that it wasn't ripped.  Thank goodness that silk is STRONG.

A few minutes of fussing with the crochet hook (and yelling at the cats) and I mostly managed to get the stitches back to where they had been (and also feel better).  I didn't take a picture of the "after" because I have decided that it doesn't matter.  I can see where it is, but I don't need to point it out to everyone else.  I still think it's perfect.

Obviously I included this picture to show off the goods.

For a more casual look, wrap it around (carefully) as to look as though you're whimsical and carefree (instead of uptight and controlling)!

Cropped oddly because the Enabler managed to get the composter in the background of the only decent picture of my face.  Good thing he cooks well :)

Summer knitting, happened so fast

I'm blogging from my phone today because I'm way too comfortable where I am and don't feel like sitting in the computer chair. This also means that all pictures in this post were taken with and edited on my phone, and the photos will probably be out of order but I think you guys can probably figure it out.

Now then, on with it. I've been knitting a lot lately. I finally finished a couple of things that had been hanging around awhile so I was able to start a few new fun things!

I knit up a toy elephant using the pattern Elijah by Ysolda Teague. I absolutely love it, except that I should have used 3 mm needles (as the pattern suggested) instead of 3.25 mm needles. I didn't have any 3 mms and I was too impatient to wait until I could go buy some so I just used the 3.25s. It turned out fine, but I can see the stuffing through some of the stitches. I also can't decide whether or not to add eyes. He looks so creepy/cute with no eyes!

I also started knitting Earth and Sky by Stephen West for the Enabler. I've never done intarsia before so I think I was unprepared for the amount of ends that would need to be woven in. End weaving aside, I totally love the colours and the pattern, and I think it will look amazing when it is finished, which will be sometime before snow starts flying.

Most importantly though, I started knitting something for myself. I'd been looking for a pattern for my single skein of handmaiden sea silk ever since I got it last fall. It was this skein that really gave the Enabler his name. I wouldn't have bought it as it was $40 and so lovely that I didn't think I could do it justice, but he insisted. After 8 months of searching and rejecting 100s of patterns (and coming to terms with the fact that one skein was not enough for Clapotis), I finally found a pattern worthy of the yarn. Sweet Dreams by Boo Knits is the one that finally captured my fancy. It has optional beading, and I have never done beading before but I think this shawl will give me a reason to try.

I haven't gotten to the lace or beading part yet but I already love this pattern. I haven't done lace in awhile so I'm really excited to sink my teeth into this one. And trust me when I say that the photo does not do this yarn justice. The yarn shines due to it being 70% silk, and ranges in colour from silver to pewter to bronze to gold (the colorway is called mineral). It's lovely in every way and I really think the marriage of pattern and yarn is going to be a beautiful thing. Now let's hope I don't prove myself wrong.

Ok, blogging done, time to go knit al fresco since it's (finally) sunny and beautiful outside!

You spin me right round

Things I took for granted until very recently:

1.       Watching the new episode of Game of Thrones every Monday night (yes I know it aired on Sundays but the Enabler and I always watched it on Mondays).

2.       The lack of immediate need for a spinning wheel.

3.       That area that isn’t quite your back and isn’t quite your butt.

All of these things changed quite abruptly within the last 48 hours.

The new episode of Game of Thrones didn’t air last night, because the season finale was last week and there are no more new episodes until the new season starts.  I’m already experiencing withdrawal symptoms (such as humming the theme song to myself over and over and over…  Daaaaaaaaaa daaaaaaaaa, dah dah dah daaaaaa, di di dah dah di di dah dah di di dah dah di di dah dah dum… etc.)

I didn’t want or need a spinning wheel because I had never used one before, but then I learned how to spin and now my need for a spinning wheel is all consuming.

And I have gained a great appreciation for the former area between my back and my butt, because I fell down some rain-slick stairs yesterday and remarkably that was the one area that took the entire force of the fall.  This area has now morphed somehow into a new thing.  It’s almost like an extra butt cheek, or an oddly placed love handle.  Either way, my butt/back has swelled up like a Great Frigatebird trying to impress a mate, except that it's purple, not red, and it's only one side.  Symmetry would be too much to ask, of course.  Although perhaps I shouldn’t take that for granted either, because as it is I can still sleep on my right side relatively pain-free.  Somehow though, knowing that I can’t sleep on my left side or even on my back just makes me more desperate to sleep that way or even just lie that way for awhile before inevitably switching to my right side like I do 95% of the time before falling asleep.

So now that I'm sure you have a really unpleasant mental image of all that (don't worry, I'm not going to show you any actual pictures), time to talk about knitting stuff!

First off, back to point number two.  I took a class to learn how to spin using a spinning wheel this weekend and it was awesome!  Not at all like the drop spindling fiasco that I elaborated upon in a previous post.  Although I have to admit that now that I can draft a little bit better, another foray into the world of drop spindling may not be quite so disastrous as the first attempt.  Not that I'm going to be trying anytime soon, mind you.  Given the cost comparison of spinning wheels vs. drop spindles though, drop spindling doesn't seem so bad.  It may be a long time before I can spring for the wheel, and it's possible that getting a drop spindle wouldn't kill me, but I'm still not quite sure it's worth the risk.

We got to try out a bunch of different wheels and learned how to spin singles and then ply two singles together to make 2-ply yarn.  We also learned flick carding and hand carding, how to blend colours of fleece together, and how to use a drum carder.  We spun from comb top, roving, and hand carded rolags.  I'm just hoping that I don't forget how to do everything before I get a chance to spin on a wheel again.

I'm not that good yet but of course I know it'll take practice.  I got better at the end of the first day and for part of the second day but then I got worse again.  My hand carding wasn't very good so my rolags were not that easy to spin from, plus I had switched to a wheel that was hard to get used to.  Excuses excuses!  Here's what I made:

The grey/white is Polwarth comb top, the brownish stuff is actually multicoloured "mystery roving", and the red, purple, blue and yellow stuff was fleece that I hand carded.

This one is probably the best quality stuff and easiest to knit with:

But the crazy coloured one I think is my favourite combination!  It was definitely the most fun to make.

I've got about 55 meters of the brown one, and probably 20-40 meters of each of the rest of them, but I didn't actually check.  All I know is that I have no idea what I"m going to make with any of them but I think maybe that doesn't matter.  I'll probably just keep them as home decor!


Another thing that I have to announce is the completion... finally... of the Persnickety socks!  I needed some knitting to bring along on the drive to my parents' house on Friday, and these ended up being the only thing I had on the go that I could bring with me, so I buckled down and finished them.  Apparently I was closer to being done them than I thought.  I don't think I'd ever make them again, but I'm really happy with the result!

I've got two more projects that I'm working on, both of which I can't talk about or show off, but they are nearing the finish line, so stay tuned!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go ice my extra butt cheek.