If there’s anyone who hasn’t discovered Sandra Boynton yet of “Hippo Birdies Two Ewes” fame, let me help you find her site.  Including here, for a little music with your knitting. (That’s not the only song, just my favorite.  Not to diss Davy Jones from the Monkeys singing “I Want To Be Your Personal Penguin.”) Boynton’s “Dogtrain” album is where I first heard Alison Krauss.

But the part that intrigues me is where she says she wrote “Chocolate: The Consuming Passion,” which my husband and I laughed over till we cried, solely because that way she could write all her chocolate off her taxes for a year.  The book recently went out of print after 20 years, I’m hoping simply so she can update it.  You know, it might need more research.  Yeah, I can see why she let it go out of print, just, you know, while she stocks up.  I can’t wait to buy the new version.

Do you suppose…I wonder what types of chocolate would best match my favorite cinnamon-brown baby alpaca…  Nah…

The 20″ long tie-in-front blue shawl is one skein of Lisa Souza’s Sock!Merino in Siobhan; the white is one strand Misti Baby Alpaca laceweight doubled with one strand of Claudia’s laceweight silk, 1100 yards/100g, a half skein left over from an earlier project.

I’m playing with my yarns.  I’m reversing the placements of the ssk’s and the k2tog’s.  Except, doing one project right after the other, my fingers keep stuttering: wwwwait, which, oh, that’s right, got it.  I feel a little like a teen in driver’s ed trying not to hit the gas when I’m going for the brakes as my movements re-orient to the new reality.

I came back here and Michelle had already made that comment–and I laughed out loud. Surgeon’s hands!  While I was coming here to write that I had the central line installed, two more IV’s to go.  Too funny.  Now, to connect those two on the white needle to the lines above them.  This may take awhile.

Channon wanted a lace repair book.  Here you go.

It’s splayed out like a seventh-grade frog dissection in science class.  Here’s what I’ve done so far:  I undid the cast-off to the point above where I needed to work and opened up the work space by holding the stitches on separate needles there.  Every time I unpicked a double decrease, I ran a length of laceweight between the two side stitches to hold them together (tying it in a knot so it doesn’t pull out) so that when I come back up, it’s clear they’re a pair straight across, with the one between to be added back in.

I then thought to add a length of yarn through the stitches being dropped as I laddered them down to get to the offending part.  Ahoy!  Here be drag-ins!

It does help that I’m doing this after a rinsing-and-drying so that the stitches want to hold their shape.  I got a few rows worked back together.  But it gets squirrelly where I knitted past the drops, and I have now spent an hour doing everything but going back and working on it some more.  I keep thinking things like, you know, I really need to get that carpet cleaned.  Maybe today’s a good day to go do that instead.

You know those cartoons with a tiny devil dressed in red and a pitchfork leaning into one side of a person’s head, and the angel waving frantically on the other?  “Just frog it!” “No, no, it can be rescued and you know it!”

What is ironic is if I end up trying both, but I don’t think so.  Yet.

The first picture is the update on yesterday’s problem. Today’s the day for making progress on it.

Yesterday, feeling crummy, I needed something more positive to work with.  If I didn’t have any energy, I could borrow some from my wool.

I had some of Lisa Souza‘s Sock!Merino yarn in Siobhan that had been sitting in my stash since the last Stitches, and for days it had been begging to come out of the bag.  I was finishing (I thought) Ocean; I ignored the Siobhan, and besides, I had definite plans for what would come next.  But never mind what I wanted to do: that Lisa yarn leaped into my hands the first chance it got yesterday and stomped its soft little merino feet at me and how could I resist?

I was of two minds about what I would do with it.  Make a short, narrow, tie-in-front type wrap?  Or a long, full shawl, the kind that would prompt a small child to twirl around and around to see it swoosh out around her?  The stitches were coming out flowing and soft.  Hmm.  With two skeins, I had enough Siobhan for one or the other but not both.  I spent a long time hashing out pattern details for knitting it either way: one yoke, a different increase row, two outcomes.  I changed my mind a few times.  I started.  And then, being foggy-brained, I stitched a boneheaded error.

There is a cliche in knitting about mistakes: if you wouldn’t be able to see it from the back of a galloping horse, nobody else will ever notice it either, so just forget it.  Except that idea doesn’t work for me anymore–what I have to go by, I realized, looking at the two missing yarnovers around the central stitch three rows earlier and how tight it would all draw up into the later rows if I tried to breeze by, was the thought that, if, say, a non-knitter photographer enlarged that section and put it on the cover of a book or magazine, would a knitter notice?

And so we had Siobhan, take two, and the photo above.  Early on in the process. No biggy.

And then we got an email last night that totally energized me and made it suddenly clear exactly why I needed to be working on a practical, machine-washable beautiful and soft wool for a new mom.   The short tie-in-front model wins.  Congratulations and welcome to the world, little one!

Yeah, I was tired when all that happened. No, the Russian splice idea won’t work–the yarn’s too slippery. What it did do was give me a thought that allowed me some calming down so I could start to think it through better. Richard this morning looked at it and went, “Even *I* can see that one!”

But I knew in the instant I woke up that of course I could fix that.  Just an extra necklace hanging around the neck of one stitch by the time I get done. Yes it’ll take awhile. Yes it’ll mean dropping down many rows at the point of a double decrease each time, and it will be a major pain.  And yes I can do it. And no it won’t show.

And no I don’t have to and actually can’t right now because it’s still damp–but just wait till I get my mitts on it.  I’ll show it.

Company about to show–later!

Did you?  My stars. I NEVER do that, and now I’ve done it two shawls in a row.  Although the last shawl, at least it was in the very last row or so, quickly fixed.

You see this nice, innocent picture?  With the shawl kind of doubled over on itself so it doesn’t look so big, but, it is.  The color of the yarn is pretty true on my screen.  A bit slippery with silk, a bit dark to work with in a room that could stand to have a little more light in the evenings, which is my prime knitting time.  We even went out shopping for a new lamp while I was working on it, but didn’t find one we liked yet.  Not to mention, I can’t go near fluorescent ones–please, nobody recommend the Otts here.  Thanks.

I snapped this photo and then went to block it. Which, as I started to stretch it out on the guest bed, is when the dropped stitch started to run.  And it was a double decrease, meaning one dropped stitch instantly turned into three lines of yarn droppings.  (Yes, Mom, I said that. )

Right dead center of the whole thing.  I’d gone merrily right past it, closing the gap after it.  Totally unsalvageable–there’s no way to recover that and make it look right.  All I can do is wait for it to dry and then buy me half an Ocean’s worth of frogs to get back to that point.  Dang.

(Edited to add: hmm. I could perhaps weave one small length through, working things back together and fastening the stitches in place and Russian-splicing that into the ongoing yarn.  I’ll have to experiment and see if I can get it to look good enough and be safe enough from running again to satisfy me.  But I’m picky, and rightfully so.)

I’ve never been quite sure what to do with this one.  It’s a fair bit brighter yellow, pink and green with a little blue in real life, with the yellow fairly dominant.  (If you embiggen it the colors come out truer.)  The yarn is Fleece Artist’s Merino 2/6 in Sorbetto, machine washable, totally practical for, say, a mom with small children to try to keep up with, and at the time I got it, I didn’t think I could do anything shawl-ish with one 350m skein of sock yarn.  Now I know I can, but this was already knitted by then.  I used the lace pattern in the main body of the Michelle shawl, six repeats across with one extra stitch at each side, and got a nice length out of it.  (Cast on 39 on size 6mm needles, American size 10…)  The eye is more pleased with patterns in odd numbers, but this was visually busy enough that one would never casually notice that it was done in an even number of repeats.  It’s a good use of the yarn; it made a nice scarf for wrapping multiple times around the neck to keep out the cold.

Of which, however, there is not a whole lot in northern California.  A short wrap to tie in front against the chilly fog would be much more the thing for around here, and I’ve long debated frogging this and reknitting it.

Except it’s a perfectly nice scarf and there’s no good-enough reason to waste the effort.  Yarn can always be replaced with more.  Time cannot ever.

It’ll find its rightful home in its rightful time.

Every now and then a post comes out that is just so close to home.  That last was one of them for me. Thank you all for your kind comments; they are very much appreciated.

Meantime, back on the knitting front, I’m afraid I can’t show this pattern yet, but I can answer the request for a closeup on the colors.  The large tote was a gift from my older daughter for Mother’s Day four years ago that she knew would be absolutely perfect, and it was.

That daughter and her husband just bought their first house yesterday.   Life IS good!  Celebration time!  We got a funny note about their two cats exploring their new place, discovering hiding spots that the humans in the household hadn’t known were there.

I’m remembering how our small boy stuffed our silverware down the heating grates in our first house in New Hampshire, some of it never to be found again, and the day he flipped off the furnace in zero-degree weather.  It had to have been him.  His big sister would never have thought of it.  I can only guess it must have been in a moment I was carrying him to or from the laundry room–toddlers have an instinctive love for switches and an unerring sense of when Mom is just distracted enough that they can get away with it.

And I’m glad cats are small and don’t have thumbs.  Because they would sure have fun if they did.

Laura, you got it.  The Julia.  It’s in the book all ready to go for you, and you can do your choice of yarn types/sizes in two gauges/sizes.  The whole thing is six stitches long, repeated forever. (I know–you said counting to four was your limit.  Heh. I don’t think you have to count with this one, though, so it’s all good.)  Purl straight across the back every time.  If you want to, when the boys are in bed, you can do the zig zaggy optional bottom edge.  Or not.  Me, I finally bought a Weight Watchers scale so I could measure grams so that I could figure out how much yarn I was using per row and thus when to start into the bottom edging and have enough if I knew I was running short.  (Note the lack of bottom edging on this one.  I like the seashell effect of leaving it plain, too.)

The larger-stitch-count Julia, by the way, is the pattern I used for the Knitpicks merino yarn you dyed and totally surprised me with at TKGA a year ago.  It’s a little thicker than most fingering weights I use, and this is how it looks knitted up on my size 9 (5.5mm) needles.  Funny that you should ask for plain and simple, and, hey, looky what I knitted last fall!

No whizzing through this one quite yet; I spent yesterday’s time on it constantly counting stitches and editing the text to be exactly right (and being distracted while I concocted another design on the side; I seem to be on a roll.) One more row and I’ll be home free to where I’m just repeating what’s been done.  Count count count. I know what the math says–trust but verify anyway. If perfectionism takes extra time, it’s an absolute necessity and worth it.

My friend Jasmin went to Maine a few weeks ago and got to do something I can only dream of–she went to visit Melinda of Tess’ Designer Yarns!  When Melinda found out Jasmin was in my local knitting group, she told her of how I’d snagged some of her yarn at Stitches West two years ago with my motorized wheelchair, breaking a skein; when I’d apologized and tried to pay for it, Melinda had just waved me away.

So I had gone home, pulled some Tess silk yarn out of my stash, knitted it up into a lace scarf as far as the yardage would take me, and mailed it off to Maine.

Referencing that, Melinda sent Jasmin home with some yarn for me. I got an email from Jasmin in the showroom, asking for color preferences.  I thought I was buying it, and told Jasmin I’d love to have more of that Merino Lace.

At Stitches East last fall, I had traded Melinda some of her hand dyed Merino Lace for a copy of my book and we had both come away happy.  Since then, I had taken it out and admired it longingly many a time but it just hadn’t found what it wanted to be yet.

Till Jasmin came home and happily gifted me, from Melinda, with more.  Four skeins, two colorways I like, one that played really well with what I’d bought in Baltimore.  I swatched.  I swooned.  Yes!  Somehow, the brightness and cheerfulness of the fuschia, purple, and coral with a touch of yellow were the perfect antidote to the still-somewhat-smoky skies overhead, and I am totally loving working with these.  Thank you, Melinda!  Jasmin, too!

(P.S. Knitpicks.com still has knitting books at 40% off right now. I’m just sayin’.)

Oops, I need to snip that end in back.

One time when we had an earthquake about the size of yesterday’s, I was at the funeral of a 95-year-old friend and the bench I was sitting on suddenly jolted upwards hard while the chandeliers were swinging wildly overhead. I figured it was Al waving goodbye–I could just picture him laughing.  (And I was grateful for California earthquake codes.)

Thank you to those who’ve been checking up on us, but no, we’re an eight-hour drive north of where yesterday’s quake was.  You know why the US Geological Survey folks put earthquake predictions in 30-year increments?  Because 30 years is the length of the average mortgage.  They want people to realize that it will happen in their time–and we’ve definitely had a few, but nothing worse than superficial cracks in the chimney grout so far at our house.  The kid across the street can you tell you, though, about being swooshed out of his swimming pool during the 7.1 Loma Prieta.  Well, no, wait–after that one, our kitchen cabinet doors in a modern-circa-1950’s sliding style fell down at our heads rather than slid across every time we tried to open them: a good incentive to remodel.  Which we did.

Meantime.  This is the Constance shawl from Wrapped in Comfort, with a slight modification in the yoke pattern: I changed one pattern row from k1 *yo k1 sl1-k2tog-psso k1 yo k1, to a pattern row of, *k1, yo, sl1-k2tog-psso, yo, k2.  In other words, I switched places on the yarnovers and single stitches next to the double decreases–not a big difference, and simply for my own amusement.  I was using one strand of a fine laceweight cashmere and one of a fine laceweight silk from Claudia’s Handpaints (but not painted) that I bought at Purlescence.  (Where, by the way, you can order a copy of the book and I will go in and inscribe it for you if you’d like.)

Using a silk yarn with a cashmere yarn made for a far different effect than if I’d bought a blend: the silk sparkles and twinkles prominently around the visually quieter cashmere, a very pretty effect. The separate silk strand was a little slipperier to knit than a blend, and the doubled strands in such thin yarns looked a bit messy on the needles–but blocked! This is part of why I launched into the project I reknit yesterday–I like how  two laceweights play together, how they look finer, blocked, then a fingering weight of the same overall weight, and I wanted to play with the idea more, adding differing colorways to the idea.

Oh, and, since I was using finer yarns than the original Constance called for, and since the Constance is one of the least full patterns in the book, I widened the width by using the template for Tara’s Redwood Burl shawl (minus the two extra stitches at the end of the row on the Tara) and swapping in the other lace patterns.  361 stitches.

The recipient for this one is quite petite, someone who actually makes me feel tall (and that’s saying something); I think I got it a good length for her.  I’m going to show it off at Purlescence tomorrow night, and then it goes to the grandmother of my new daughter-in-law.

And in a moment you won’t.  I think.  I could just keep going as it is and knit a perfectly nice shawl. Only problem is, I want this exact yarn to go into that exact new idea and it doesn’t in its current state. I was swatching and swatching and swatching with a different yarn to the side last night, feeling restless with how I’d planned the thing even though it was a perfectly good idea, and at bedtime, having finally figured out my way through to just exactly what I wanted, I was skipping down the hall like a little kid: I DID it! I GOT it!  This is SO cool!

Only, I didn’t entirely yet–I have to frog this down to row four and have a do-over.  Part of me says oh just go knit that idea in something else and let this one be, there’s nothing wrong with it.

Except, I don’t want to.  I want THIS yarn to be the new idea. So there.  Because I’m the mommy. I said so.  Frog it.

…Tomorrow.  Lemme think about it first.  (Casting on to test the new idea in yet another yarn, and then…)

Moral of the story: and *this*, children, is why we have stashes.  Basic playground equipment is essential.

(Edited to add: I did it.  I took it all the way back to zero and got it past the frogging point again.  It was so worth it.)

I wrote yesterday that I was going to go fix those dropped stitches, but I kept putting it off.  I worked out two different ways of tackling the problem but kept doing neither. Finally, knowing I wanted it to be a one-day problem only, I sat down and made myself go for Door #2, Bob.

I put a point protector on one end of my long circular: there was absolutely no reason to risk having stitches fall off that end while repairing at this one.  There was an unexpected sense of relief at that that made the whole job immediately feel much more do-able.

Then I took a second circular needle and slipped the stitches onto it, moving them over one-by-one across the row till I got to the problem area.  Since the stitches remaining on the original needle were not so scrunched up now, and since I wasn’t risking losing any more with that point protector in place, I spread the work open so I could get a good look at the pattern repeat next over and rework the dropped area to match it.  The whole thing took me maybe five minutes; I was surprised.  Piece of cake.

Then I slipped the stitches back onto the original needle on that side, took the spare–it didn’t matter what size it was, as long as it wasn’t bigger than the original needle, I was only using it for holding, not knitting–and went to the other side of the row and repeated the process.  But over there, I had a live stitch that did not end at a yarnover, so it turns out I’d totally lucked out; it could have run clear to the beginning, and it was a fairly slippery yarn. I’d put a snip of yarn to mark and hold it, hadn’t tied it, and it had fallen out and the stitch was running free.

Darwin missed that shawl.

And now it is repaired, re-cast-off, blocking, and done, just needing that final end woven in.  When it is dry I will run it in going halfway across the bottom where it will be a length of yarn in storage for any future repairs, right there where it’ll be easy to find.

Hey, Mary–you want to go to Purlescence today? I hear you beat me that Monday to the new Casbah shipment by a few hours, and I happen to know you like this color.

…Fry, fry a hen.

This is a spoiler alert (because I am being just too impatient to wait any longer).  If you are the person this is for, if you already saw the new shop model at Purlescence, if you had a hand in that shop model’s creation but it was too small for you, go away and don’t read this for a day or two, okay?

Two days ago, I went to block this: I rinsed it gently in tepid water and went to lay it out in a circle.  Some yarns, some fibers, I run my wires through to get them to behave; some just need to dry patted into shape.  But either way, first you have to lay it out the way you want it to look.  The lace stitches magically fall into place when you add a little water–there’s this marvelous transformation from crumpled tin foil to actual, pretty lace.

And when I did, I found that having carried it around on errands during the cast-off row, having it on a 7mm needle while working it with a 10mm straight needle as I cast off, had been a big mistake. I had dropped a stitch and not noticed and it had run.

And then, at the other end of the cast-off row, I found another spot, although I rescued that one at an earlier stage in its bungee jumping.  Dropped stitches in the cast-off?  I have never done such a thing before. And to have done it twice?  What was I smoking?  (Oh. Right. The city’s compost pile.)

What bungee jumps down must bounce back up.  But that blew my plans for delivering the thing yesterday.  Crum.  At least I did get to see that working on an unfamiliar scale with a somewhat unfamiliar yarn, I’d guessed it right and the shawl and the neckline had come out the size and fit I wanted it to be for whom it’s going to.

I had another shawl that had been plodding slowly along in the background while other projects with bigger deadlines had come and gone, and in a huff at the blue one, finished that off yesterday instead.

Today I go bounce back up on the bungee cord here.  Part of me is urging myself to rip out multiple rows and not fuss with fixing, just go way back and then peacefully reknit it; I like this yarn, I like looking forward to making (you know now who you are) happy, and rescue work is a bear.

I’m going to do the rescue work.  It’s good practice.

So I spent yesterday waiting impatiently for it to dry, and then tinked the cast-off before it was probably entirely ready for it, got it back on the needles and now, finally, not only is it ready, but I am too.