Almost ready
Saturday October 14th 2023, 9:57 pm
Filed under: Knit

Hanked, washed, dried, and now the seven new cones are wound into balls and ready to go.

I spent a fair amount of time studying the picture I want to knit. The person who took it was delighted when I asked permission to–which gives me incentive to get going.

So. Do I put the moss on the boulder in the foreground, or not? Or even put the boulder in? So many decisions to make.

I think I need two things: to study the picture at longer length, and to sleep on it, now that I know exactly what the colors of my scoured yarns are, because things are always clearer if you give it a little time to think about. Just not too much.



Speckles
Wednesday October 11th 2023, 9:17 pm
Filed under: Family,Knit

Speckles, he said, a little surprised. You don’t normally like speckles.

I looked at him funny, and answered, Since when?

It was just a thing he thought I didn’t like.

Now, for a little context, there was a beaded gerdan by a Ukrainian artist I adore where she made the water lapping the shore below the lighthouse and seagull become the hair of the Lady of the Sea, sunflowers alongside. Gorgeous (and very expensive, as an original work of art should be. Look at the detail on that beadweaving!) I couldn’t quite place what it was but something about it didn’t quite…

…Till I mentioned about it to him. To which he said, You never wear a face.

He was right. I had never quite put my finger on that feeling but he totally had and it was one of those moments where he knew me better than I did. He was right. He was right. It kind of blew me away.

Clearly he expected to nail this one as successfully but I was like, Nope nope nope nope nope.

And ever since that conversation at dinner my brain’s been going, I mean, you’ll never see me wearing calico, and canvasing the inner opinion I’d say Jackson Pollock neither for that matter, but a hat? Honey. As the late great Elizabeth Zimmerman said (and it is proven especially true the last day of this month every year), People will put anything on their heads.

I can handle speckles. Granted, I do plan to fob it off on the first victim to willingly cross its path.

Actually, I still adore that gerdan. If I were ever to change my feelings on the face thing, at least as a one-timer, that would be why. My art dealer dad would totally have understood.

I’m going to add a note here that I’m following the war in Israel carefully, in addition now to the one in Ukraine, and praying hard.



Rinsed 10″ ago, not officially blocked
Tuesday October 10th 2023, 9:28 pm
Filed under: Knit

I found it! The yarn that I bought at Stitches West 2019 from this vendor! Slightly darker than mine. It would make a fabulous pair of socks at $20 on closeout. I used the first half of Ostrich Plumes lace for my rainbow effect, because as a lace stole what else could it be.

I didn’t run the end in because I didn’t cut it off because I wanted to have the option of trying it on again and maybe adding just a few last repeats. Again. But at about 16×76″, I think that’ll do.



A good ribbing
Monday October 09th 2023, 9:51 pm
Filed under: Knit

I was idly wondering: you know, I’ve never knit a hat entirely in ribbing from a skein of Mecha. Ribbing eats yardage (plus it’s twice the motion spent per stitch and I like doing stockinette more) and I was never jumping at the chance to spend two for the outcome of one.

My right hand is still requiring enough breaks in the knitting from that tumble that I only got this much done but I’m thinking the answer is yes, it will be enough.

Did some of this standing in line at the pharmacy; got a few “wish I could spend this waiting time getting something done, too” looks.

Still need to find out if there will be much of a fold to the brim.

Now that I have you totally on the edge of your seat I’ll just have to finish it tomorrow.



Wild fling! You make everything! Groovy!
Saturday October 07th 2023, 8:37 pm
Filed under: Family,Knit,Life

I started this at my daughter’s in April; it’s the one where Mathias looked over from his Legos at the first few inches and pronounced, That’s pretty, Grammy.

I worked on it a lot while waiting for some of the yarn to come for Carolyn’s afghan, knowing which one would take priority the moment it did–especially given the fact that slippery silk/merino laceweight is not my favorite to work with, though I love how it turns out.

I got back to it yesterday, and again some today. It’s ~65″ long.

I have more yarn. Part of me thinks, it’s past my fingertips and that’s long enough, call it my Aftober project now, done, and part of me thinks, why not use up the yarn, and part of me thinks maybe I settled the argument when I went sprawling on the pebbled walkway at 5:00 and a gallon of milk went flying left and another gallon flew right right out of my hands. (Somehow they didn’t burst. Go Trader Joe’s.)

Richard in his astonishment watching helplessly could only come up with an amazed, Did you cut the corner?! (There are azaleas in the way, you can’t.)

No, I took my eyes off my feet because I was looking at you and hit the wood edging at the corner and went sprawling.

Oh. Don’t do that.

The Etsy vendor in Washington State who’d just made the corduroy skirt I was wearing for the first time assured me she does have more of that fabric.

It does go nicely with that scarf.

Which is backing away slowly….

(Edited to add in the morning: I don’t know if the milk jugs took the initial impact? But my hands and wrists are fine. Yay!)



Just spritz a little water on those wrinkles
Friday October 06th 2023, 3:26 pm
Filed under: Family,Knit,Knitting a Gift

Two texts from me:

Your mail is here.

(There.)

She wasn’t home and was utterly baffled as to why I would be saying that. (She reassured me afterwards that the box was pretty safe where it had been left.)

First, as she opened the box, a pack of three soft thick wool socks with a post-it note attached: Toenail guards. Please use. (Yeah, they said Last One when I bought a set for me previous to that. They say men’s, but they’re not too big on my feet after running through the hand wash cycle on the machine so I knew they’d be okay, maybe even for both of them.)

Then a Lands End zipped medium tote bag, and inside that, a ziplocked…

And below all that, several sheets of paper from different stages of plotting how I was going to knit this with a post-it note on each describing the journey. Including one sketch I liked but didn’t use after discussing how to get the the angle of the side of the house within the stitch count I had: “Don’t try for perspective, Mom, do it head-on.” And so I had.

Carolyn was absolutely blown away. She told me she had never been so surprised in her life.

And later that of course I could use her picture.

It is finally, finally in its natural habitat, where it looks the best it ever has. It has at long last come home.



Freed the 7s
Sunday October 01st 2023, 10:14 pm
Filed under: Knit

I knitted the ribbing of the next big afghan project and wanted to dive right into the colorwork. But given that I haven’t even sketched the ideas out, bad as my drawing skills are… I thought maybe I should tell myself I wasn’t quite ready?

Conference sessions called for brainless knits anyway, so I pulled out a long-stalled hat. It’s the usual Malabrigo Mecha but it’s the only skein of it I’ve ever seen that was a mess. Wads and straggles, but at least no breaks.

And yet. It could be the hat it was a few inches towards; I just had to want it to. I didn’t want to. I didn’t even love the colors in the first place, though surely someone out there would.

I picked up those needles (I wanted it off them) and…sat down and made it work. Some kluging was involved (sudden thought: doing a Russian join seems an awkward term to my ears these days. Ukrainian? Who knows where it actually came from?) The hanging-by-a-thread part is now nestled inside a nice soft wad, which got stretched a little first. In the end I got a perfectly fine plain soft washable wool beanie that has nothing wrong with it and that someone out there is going to love.

I finished it. I even ran the ends in, specifically because it was the first day of Aftober, the annual get-out-there-and-finish-something-that’s-been-lagging month named after Afton, who started the tradition.

Although. More and more I’m thinking, you know? It’s not really done. Not till it’s found its person. Because that was always the point.



Unbuggetable
Thursday September 28th 2023, 9:14 pm
Filed under: Knit

It looked like an apple coddling moth and it could have come inside in one of the ones I picked from the tree. But you never know.

200F for 40 minutes or so, carefully only touching the pan. I don’t remember what temp damages super wash treatment for wools, though I know boiling does, but that’s not an issue with these yarns.

Opening the folds up, the center registered 147F a minute or two after I took it out. I let it cool, then carefully zip locked it away for now.

Doesn’t everybody bake their afghans?



A skill you will use every day for the rest of your life no doubt
Tuesday September 26th 2023, 9:52 pm
Filed under: Knit,Knitting a Gift

 

It didn’t absolutely need the framing at the sides, but I like it so much better, as you and I and everyone and anyone knew. One side to go. Thank you!

Edited to add: I wrote this and only then did it hit me: I spent all that time adding the scuffed spot in the grass under the tire swing to give it a sense of motion, the leaves on the flower, snipping the yarn ends, hours counting stitches and doing the ribbing on one side and not only did I not do the door handle, I snipped the end that was going to BE the door handle! Aargh!

So to write down quick what I just did because I got a nice lever handle and I’ll never remember how I did it: I brought the new yarn from below the door frame, crossed it over to the nearest stitch on the door, held that from pulling out while I got out a knitting needle and used the sideways bar I’d just made to knit a stitch into. Then I did a yarn over, then made a third stitch with the bar. Three stitches. Then I crossed the third stitch over the first, then the yarnover over the first, and after pulling the yarn through to knot the end in a point, got the yarn needle (eye type) back out and pulled the  yarn down to the left of what I’d just done to the back. And then I wove in the two new ends.

Oh look at that black stitch that should have been white at the bottom of the door. And guess who just snipped the new white ends off!

 



63H x 56W
Monday September 25th 2023, 7:34 pm
Filed under: Knit

The most beautiful sound of yarn being broken off.

Although.

Click on image for greater details. I would do some things differently the next time, but for flying without a pattern and not being able to visualize how anything would look before it already did, I’m pretty pleased overall. (IDIDITIDIDITIDIDITIDIDIT!!!)

The doorknob! It still needs the doorknob! Almost forgot! And leaves for the flower.

That tire swing. It’s great up close. At thumbnail size I’m a whole lot less sure. Maybe I should add the real-life rock ledge nearby. On the other hand, the clouds for all their intricacies look like a burst of whiteflies chasing a sparrow at thumbnail size, so, hey.

It needed more flowers.

It’s already got ribbing at the sides to match the top and bottom pattern-wise, even if the colors don’t. I’m pretty sure I have enough yarn; would you add dark blue ribbing to the sides to finish framing the picture? Or just leave it be?



Busy day
Saturday September 23rd 2023, 8:57 pm
Filed under: Family,Knit,Knitting a Gift

Here, at least, it was single strands rather than doubled. I looked back at the beginning of the piece and counted: when I was using two strands per stitch I had twenty-five balls of yarn going per row plus two pull-through strands. It was taking me four to five hours an inch. And that is why there is only one lonely little flower down there, though there was a daylily patch later: you grab your sanity where you can.

When I got up to the clouds I didn’t want to untangle balls anymore and decided I was fine with breaking off five or six yard lengths, using them up, and pulling them through the blue that had gotten wrapped around and around and around the white after they’d been worked behind each other at every stitch. Along with the ends of those strands every second or third row as they ran out.

I cut out the gray tire-swing chains I didn’t like and replaced them with black so they’d show up against the background and added a stitch to round out the tire better. I embroidered flower petals on the sunflower. I added a beak to the raptor. I finished the clouds yesterday, and the rows above the clouds today, and somehow all of that part is over too now and I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it.

Knit one purl one knit one purl one in dark blue to have the end edging match the beginning edging.

I have been working steadily on this since May. I am eight rows away from being finished. Maybe I should kluge that squirrel idea in there after all.

Which means I’ve been going through my phone and photos online of the C&O Canal, wondering if that’s the picture I knit next. Swain’s Lock, where I accidentally dumped my sister and our cousin over into the canal when I used my paddle to try to keep their rented canoe from hitting ours (the big sisters’) back when we were teens and they were visiting from New Jersey?

Or maybe I shouldn’t remind them.



The Colorado mountains in lace
Wednesday September 20th 2023, 8:42 pm
Filed under: Family,Knit,Knitting a Gift

Big Arrows pattern, specifically.

A couple of weeks ago I was at Cottage Yarns for a reason that had nothing to do with that skein of Malabrigo Arroyo that also came home with me. But the colors! And the softness, and the practicality of washable wool when you have no idea where it’s going to go when you’re done.

It wanted to be a cowl on 3.75mm needles and it became my carry-around project immediately no matter what my plans had been. I got a good enough start on it in the Urgent Care room waiting for Richard that working on it became a self-fulfilling knitacy.

I worked on it on the plane Friday and finished it that night in the hotel room, running in the end, rinsing to get the crumples out of the lace, squeezing the water out, wrapping it in a towel and standing on the towel, then hanging it over the shower rod: I wanted that thing dry by morning.

And in the desert air it almost was.

By the time of the funeral a few hours later it completely was.

My cousin Amy greeted person after person after person after person and loved every one of us in the extremity of her loss.

The moment I saw her I knew. I mean, by that point the offer was planned, but…!

I gave her that cowl from that impulse purchase. All of those random knit-this-first feelings, the hours spent, the medical waiting-room times of my own. The airport. The flight. The ‘I see you and I am coming’ behind it.

It wasn’t just a collection of good colors on her in mostly blue: it matched the dress she had chosen to say goodbye to her beloved husband with us in. It totally matched. She marveled.

Kevin was looking out for her still.

—-

Edited to add for my mom, who’s not on Facebook: Kevin’s daughter went to scatter her dad’s ashes, and at the place where he had talked about in a random conversation about the somedays, she found herself suddenly afraid somehow that the ashes would blow back in her face. Her cousin suggested a different spot nearby with a beautiful view of the river below. They went there and the family piled out to see, whereupon her grandmother told them that that: that was the spot where her husband had proposed to her 76 years earlier.

The daughter read a poem, her uncle said a prayer, the young children took it all in alongside the adults, the great-grandmother stood there with her loved ones, quietly remembering, remembering, and as Amy’s daughter described it, I am so sad and everything is beautiful.



Did the horse take off yet?
Wednesday August 30th 2023, 4:30 pm
Filed under: Knit,Knitting a Gift

I’d been kind of avoiding going back to the site of the skewering but it needed doing and not doing it was bothering me more. So.

I tried several methods and had to go back to the original. Next choice, while chain stitching those cross boards: a stitch too big or a stitch too small?

The white cashmere/cotton is the one that’s going to shrink the most, and the red part is certainly going to be stretched across whatever body will be under it, so clearly let’s go for too big, for now, even if it drives a part of my brain nuts.

After much experimenting, I finally ended up skewering the crosses downwards at the center, then finishing tacking down by skewering again with the other side of the yarn and working the two ends in underneath.

Given the old age of the building, having the doors a bit saggy for now works anyway, right?

Okay then. Barn doors: closed.

Alright, blue sky yarn, I’m ready for you. Royal Mail said yesterday that it has left the UK.



Icepacked after lunch
Tuesday August 22nd 2023, 9:36 pm
Filed under: Knit

I don’t normally get that much done in a day, but then I didn’t get that much else done in the day. At all. Because I was doing this. The thing did speed up a whole lot when I was done with seven of the strands.

An oh by the way is that I read the Washington Post quoting a 114-year-old woman yesterday saying, Anything the Lord gave you, use it!

Yes, ma’am!

Thank you for all the great ideas. I knew it wasn’t hard but it just wasn’t coming to me. The two tall rectangles on the far left need those Xs, the middle one doesn’t, the big door on the right has just a few more rows to go and then it’s ready for its set of four and I plan to do them all at once.

Just let me straighten out that wonky window a bit.

The thought occurs to me: the real one would be 114 years old.



3-D or not 3-D, that is the question
Wednesday August 16th 2023, 8:58 pm
Filed under: Knit,Knitting a Gift

While waiting for the red yarn to be absolutely dry before winding it up into balls, this happened.

Barbara Walker’s Paving Stones pattern, multiples of four stitches (+1, she says, but I was working in the round, so, not +1) so I used 72 and then decreased in nine sets across. Etc. Malabrigo Mecha, size 5 for the ribbing, 7 for the rest, and I have a person in mind for it but I’m going to offer it as one of several choices so they get what they actually want.

I wanted to make a brown hat. I was not able in four stores to find any of it in that color, in person nor online, but I had half an older skein left; this took it to the last couple of yards but it made it.

I did say to Richard when I was showing it off, If you put this on does it make you a bobblehead?

The other thought: since there are no cables sustaining the depth in the texture, when this pattern gets wet it deflates to flatness. In which case the hat will be polka dots. It’s a risk someone will have to take.