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?

bear mountain

Our family trip to Vermont was wonderful, and we had a great time swimming in lakes, taking long hikes, and scouring the countryside for the most delicious locally-made cheeses.

One of the most enjoyable things for me was hanging out with Joanne Smith and her flock at Bear Mountain Farm. The pretty lady you see pictured above is Iris, one of the beautiful ewes who make up Joanne's flock of Romney sheep. Joanne raises the sheep for their fleece and for breeding stock, and her fleeces makes some of the finest artisan yarn I have ever seen. Anyone lucky enough to live nearby should go visit her at the West River Farmers Market in Londonderry and see it for yourself!

Here's what I picked up when Joanne was kind enough to let me paw her wares when we visited the farm:



My hasty photo doesn't begin to do it justice, but these are 5 undyed skeins of natural, minimally-processed yarn from 2 of Joanne's ewes, Kitty (dark) and Joy (white). Each shearing is processed and spun in separate micro-batches at an eco-friendly mill in Maine. As a result, each skein of yarn is labeled with the name & photo of the very sheep from which it came. And because each sheep's fleece changes from year to year, no two lots are ever alike. Bear Mountain Farm's yarn is truly an artisan product. It's also lustrous, gorgeous, and wonderfully soft.

The yarn is mainly sold in 4-oz skeins, all worsted weight, and only available at the farmer's market or by special order, so they aren't exactly easy to come by. I'm glad I splurged a bit and brought home enough for a nice robust project!

If you're in Vermont, go to the West River Farmer's Market in Londonderry some Saturday and stop in on Bear Mountain Farm - or look for her at Rheinebeck, where her fleeces have won numerous awards. I can't wait to start knitting with this yarn!

back from the dead

Mwah hah haaaah! Just when you thought this blog was dead...



Really, has it been all summer since the last time I posted?

Appropriately enough, I resurrected a couple of knitting projects that were resting in peace, and thought I'd share. We just got back from a long road trip (from North Carolina to Vermont and back - 2,400 miles round trip!). I decided to restrict myself to working only on UFO's, and pulled out two from the archives: a spring hoodie for the Little Pea (started last winter), and the Minimalist Cardigan that I've been picking up and putting down for about four years now.

The Minimalist Cardigan is a tedious chore of a knit, what with all that pokey moss stitch. And I have become quite spoiled by top-down and bottom-up knitting, and am bored to tears by knitting flat shapeless things that need to be sewn together. Needless to say, I did not finish it on this trip. But I dutifully forced myself to work on it (at least while HWWLLB was driving on long boring stretches of I-95), made a lot of progress and can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Will I ever reach the end of this cashmerey little tunnel? Who knows. Maybe I'll be wearing this thing in the fall of 2012.

The spring hoodie, on the other hand, is done except for the zipper that needs to be sewn in. That's my mom's job, as I only know how to destroy things with a sewing machine.

I have to admire myself sometimes - I know my habits. Though it was meant to be a spring jacket for the Pea, and though I started it in winter, I made it at least a whole size too big. Somehow I knew that it would be next spring before this thing ever got finished, blocked and worn. If I can remember what I did to it, maybe I'll even post the pattern in time for other, faster people to knit it for spring.

I promise another post soon - I need to tell you all about the wonderful sheep farm where we stayed in Vermont, and the luscious yarn I got there!