knit through it

an old picture of my home knitting nest, circa 2007. today's nest is sadly lacking in feline companionship.

I'm not sure what exactly I want to say about things right now.

I am blessed, that's for sure. I have a roof over my head, a loving companion and a sweet healthy child. We have enough food. We have jobs. We have friends and family. It's important to remind myself of these things, to keep everything in perspective.

As my sister said, it could be a lot worse. Some families have much worse to deal with. Abuse. Neglect. Nobody who loves them.

We have lots of love. We are lucky.

My dad is sick. My dad is 62. My dad was the picture of health until very recently. Now he is sick. Now we are spending too many long, boring days in the hospital waiting for the next test, the next update, the next procedure.

The knitting nest on my couch is frequently transformed into a bed for my mom, since our house is so much closer to the hospital. The Little Pea is so happy to see more of her grandmother, but bewildered by the absence of her buddy, my mom's other half, her grandfather.

He is at home right now. He is waiting... we're all waiting... waiting to find out what the course of treatment will be. Waiting to know what the prognosis is. Waiting to find out what to expect.

There is certainly lots of time for knitting. Miles and miles of stockinette stitch, acres of repeating patterns... I could be knitting afghans or men's sweaters, or many many pairs of warm socks. I am struggling a bit right now with what project to pick up and take for these long hours of waiting. As if something in the choice I make will tell us something about the future.

winter catch-up

January: finally there's time to stop and sit down and clear one's head.

It's a mad dash through December. I knitted like a madwoman from the middle of November until the week after Christmas when I was still furiously finishing gifts for visiting relatives (one right under the recipient's nose!). I knitted so much and so fast that I didn't manage to snap a picture of any of it, which is kind of pathetic for Ravelry addict like me.

Above are a pair of mittens I made for myself in November when I realized one day that my hands were cold, and I did in fact have the power to do something about it. I fished out some wonderful Noro Kureyon Sock that I'd bought specifically for mitten-making, from a clearance bin at a yarn store in Vermont during our summer vacation (I think this yarn has been discontinued). I rocked through them in a few days, picked up the needles again and started powering through holiday gifts.

Here's what I made in December: three pairs of mittens, a little birdie, a lovely hat, four twisty cuffs, and a Christmas stocking (which was actually mostly knitted in November). I can't believe I finished all that in a month. I am generally a slow, plodding knitter, but in December I was a machine.

But it has left me wanting to do more creative knitting this winter - having fun making things for me, or maybe not exactly for me, maybe for someone else to have in the end, but because it's a particular technique or color or something that I want to explore. Not just because I think that maybe someone else will like it.

So I'm working on a design for a little girl's jumper in Malabrigo Ríos (UK and Aussie readers, I mean a little dress thingy, not a pullover). And I'm getting ready to write up a fun post on some of my learnings about mitten knitting, since I've done rather a lot of it lately and feel like maybe I have a nugget or two to share about it.

But most of all, I'm dreaming of knitting myself a big, warm snuggly old-fashioned-looking sweater with the wonderful yarn I got in Vermont over the summer. And I'd like to have it ready rather soonish so that I can wear it in this winter weather... but I'm not exactly a speedy knitter. So maybe it will be for next winter. Maybe it will be one of the spectacular fishermen's sweaters from the book I got for Christmas: Patterns for Jerseys, Guernseys and Arans: Fishermen's Sweaters from the British Isles, by Gladys Thompson. What a wonderful book! I am snuggling up with it when I go to bed at night, leafing through wonderful historic photos and reading about the author's anthropological ramblings through the British Isles in the first half of the last century. It's as good as a Henry James novel for transporting you to another time and place.

voodoo yarn

Sometimes I think that knitting projects have ju-ju associated with them that cannot be broken, no matter how many times you unravel, re-knit or re-think them.

Is it me, or is it the project? That's what I always wonder when a project continues to perpetuate the funk that first envelops it when things start to go wrong... even when you've tried to right the wrong, every which way.



Exhibit A: the unfinished Muande vest, which I'm afraid is now permanently unfinished. The particular ju-ju of this project is Will Not Be Completed. It's an old story that you've surely heard before.

You've heard it before right here in fact, because I was just griping about this vest a few weeks ago. After two - yes two - unhappy endings that were ripped back to the armholes, this vest seemed to gain a new lease on life when I took a workshop on steeking at SAFF. Steeking! The solution to my design problem - to maintain the stripe pattern, I needed to keep working the vest in the round. But how to get armholes? Steek them, of course!

So I did that. Choppy-Choppy!

Then I finished off the shoulders, and all I had to do was work the neckband and the cuffs - cuffs? What do you call the finishing around the armholes of a vest? They're not cuffs. Anyway, you know what I'm talking about. That's all I had to knit. A tiny bit. And that's when I ran out of yarn. Just millimeters from the finish line...

Unfinished.

The sad part is that this was a wonderful one-of-a-kind gift yarn sent by a friend from France. So it's not like I can just go run out the LYS and grit my teeth while I pay for a full ball of yarn needing only 18 inches of it to finish a project. That would suit me fine right about now! I'd be happy to pay for 100 yards of yarn and use 0.5 yards, thank you very much.

And it's not like I can just rip it back and rework it a bit to economize on the gray yarn because I CUT IT UP WITH SCISSORS. CHOPPY CHOPPY.

Unfinished.

Bad ju-ju. It hangs around a knitting project like preteen girls at the stage door of a Justin Bieber show. Go away, project funk! Go funk up a political campaign or something and leave me to my quiet little hobby.

fiber fun weekend

seymour the PR llama

I had a lovely time at S.A.F.F. 2011, the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair! Snuggling with cute llamas and alpacas (like Seymour here) was one of the unexpected treats of my weekend.

This was my first time at SAFF, since normally our family camping trip falls on the same weekend. I've been looking forward to this event ever since the spring, when the camping trip date was announced and I realized I'd be able to go! YAY!


sock yarn from Kitchen Sink Dyeworks

In the past, sheep & wool festivals have been all about yarn shopping for me. At SAFF this year I decided to spend my money on workshops instead (well okay I did buy some yarn and stuff). But mostly it was learning. I took a workshop on steeking with Aimee Abernathy, which was lots of fun. I learned how to steek! I loved it! Now I'm dying to cut up all the knitting I can get my hands on! Almost! As soon as I got home I unraveled half of the vest I made recently for the Little Pea and started reworking the top half to have steeked armholes. That's how much fun steeking is!

But even better than steeking... Spinning!


Robyn shows us the wheel

Oh, spinning. It's so wonderful. The instructor, Robyn Josephs, was amazing. First we learned how to spin with a drop spindle. Then we got on the spinning wheels and went crazy. After three hours, I was completely hooked. I left the class walking on air, and grabbed some roving and a drop spindle to take home.


merino top dyed by Lunabud Knits

Spinning lit up some very primal neurons way down deep in my brain. It was such a meditative, all-encompassing activity. You can't think too much, or you'll mess it up. You have to let your fingers think for themselves, your feet pedal by themselves, and get your thinking part of the brain out of the way so that the intuitive part can take over. I need more of that kind of serenity in my life.

Now I just need to save up for a spinning wheel.

And I'm thinking that maybe when I grow up I'll get a little farm and populate it with adorable Jacob sheep. Really, could they be any cuter??

toddler socks

What a joy to knit. Short, colorful, quick, and much-appreciated: basically the perfect knit.

They would have been even more enjoyable if the yarn had not been 100% acrylic (yes, that's 100%!), but hey, you have to clean out the stash some time. Besides, she'll outgrow these socks by the end of this winter.

Don't they look great with her new shoes?

Now the Pea is ready to go camping. And I'm ready to get back on the job and finish that vest I was whinging about last week.

stop-start-stop

It's funny how much knitting can imitate life.

I've been having fun working on a little orange-and-gray vest for the Little Pea. It will be perfect for fall, if I can just figure out how I want to finish it.

The yarn is great - two balls of Muande from Filature de Valgaudemar in France. They were a gift from Géraldine, whose family owns the mill - one of the oldest mills in France. The yarn has been sitting in the yarn cabinet for a long time, til I came up with the right project for them. A vest seems just right for the very autumn color scheme (Souri and Flamme).

I wanted the vest to be simply knit, all-in-one-piece of course, which allowed me to use single-row stripes -- a nice touch in this chunky yarn. So I started from the bottom and worked up. But how to do the armholes? I didn't want to separate the front and back, so I thought perhaps I'd steek the armholes.

But I didn't like the way the shoulders were shaping up, so I ripped it back to the armhole beginnings and started again.

I decided to cave in and work the back and front separately. Then I made a big miscalculation, which I didn't notice til the knitting was almost done. Rip again.

Now I'm back at the starts of the armholes and trying to come up with a novel solution that lets me finish my vest-in-the-round without sending me back to the starting line all over again. Any ideas?

In the mean time, we have a camping trip coming up, and the Little Pea needs some warm socks. Maybe working on those for a while will free my brain cells and let me come up with a solution for the vest.

Ah, knitting problems. So much more delightful than most of life's problems. I like any problem that can be sorted out over a beer and an episode of Masterpiece Theater.

who put the U in UFO?

finished!

The Little Pea has a book about a baby deer who is lost in the woods. He makes friends with a baby raccoon, who is trying to climb over a log. As the little raccoon struggles over the log, he chants to himself, "I can do it! I can doooooo it!"

We are chanting "I can doooo it!" a lot at our house lately. For one, the Little Pea is two years old now. There are a lot of things she is learning to doooo by herself (including climbing over logs). And our long trip in the car recently led me to pick up some long-abandoned UFO's to see if I couldn't make myself doooo it and finish them on the long ride. The trend has continued, and I'm picking up one hibernating project after the next lately, then putting them down all happy and finished.

I finished a baby blanket (pictured above), which didn't hibernate too long, but had been put away when I ran out of yarn just short of the finish line. Happily enough, I found the skein I needed at a little yarn store in Vermont while we were visiting there.

This week (on another car trip) I finished the Copper Scarf that I'd started exactly one year ago, intending to wear it in the fall, and then somehow losing interest just about the time cool weather arrived. It looks great, and I can't wait til the temperature drops enough to show it off. It's made from Manos Silk Blend and feels like heaven.

And then there's the Minimalist Cardigan. My problem child. After more than 4 years, I was so close. Just a tiny bit of knitting left to go... and I have run out of yarn. AAARGH! Of course. And this is no variegated, multi-colored, kettle-dyed, funky schlunky yarn where dye lots don't matter - it's Rowan Cashsoft DK, knit in moss stitch, so neat and regular and incredibly unforgiving... and the last section I have to knit is the front panels, from the armpit to the shoulder. Just where a color shift would be most obvious.

Clearly, I need to just suck it up, order a couple of skeins and hope for the best. There's no chance in hell that the same dye lot is out there someplace, 4 years later. Is there...? I think I better go trawling on Ravelry. Maybe I'll get lucky!

I am being so good. There are a handful of seductive new projects and yarns in my cabinet, just singing my name like little sirens... and I am doing my best to ignore them while I finish up these UFO's. I think once that Minimalist Cardi is done I should get some sort of prize for ending a 4-year hiatus. What's your longest-left UFO that you actually finished?