two knits of ivory

Once again I'm surprised at how little knitting I'm getting done, especially on the weekends. I really miss my "it's sweltering outside, lets sit on the couch" weekend knit-a-thons. :-( By last Friday night I had finished up the heel and was ready to start the leg of the Firestarter socks. After I knit about a cable repeat and a half I put the work on a set of circulars to see how it fit. I found it barely went over my heel. Phooey! I put it away in frustration, secretly hoping that I'd wake up on Saturday and find it magically fixed. Oh yes, I'm delusional. Too bad so sad-for me. The twisted stitches and the density of the yarn have conspired to make a fairly non-pliable sock. If I want to give these away I was going to have to frog. I hate going back the way I came in any endeavor, be it walking in the woods, going back into the house when I forget something on my way to work, or even knitting. I have a built-in, deeply ingrained impulse to go forward...

Oh, I do have a blog post a-brewin' but I took these cutey patootey pics of Hunter this weekend and have to post them. You've come a long way Hunter. We love you!

One of the interesting things I took from my first read through of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Opinionated Knitter was a project idea using scrap yarn. If I recall correctly, she mentioned she put aside like sized yarn scraps into nearby containers to use together for knitting something, I don't remember what. I loved this idea. I am plagued by what to do with yarn scraps. My natural sentimentality dictates I should keep a reminder of the yarn I used, especially for those projects which went away from me as gifts or failures or even natural attrition. I've kept this idea in my mind and then somehow it melded with the log cabin knitted afghan project from another book I read through this summer, Mason-Dixon Knitting. Maybe something brought these things together outside of my mind but for the life of me I can't remember what it was, if it was anything at all. Two things have stopped me from starting this project. First and foremost is which design philosophy to employ. Do I ...

After whipping up the dog sweater on Saturday's road trip , and putting down the knitting altogether Monday night, I did begin to feel free of (some of) the emotional weight of Blueberry Moon and the Firestarter Socks . Blueberry Moon got some action on Sunday night but the next step felt insurmountable on Monday. Sick of knitting Project Stole and not ready to face Firestarter, I didn't knit a thing and I found that really helped. I couldn't even focus on watching more of season three of BSG; I just watched the mindless sitcom lineup on NBC and went to bed. Then, yesterday, full of ambiguous knitting hopes and dreams I got home early and made the decision I've been coddling for a week or so. I abandoned the Firestarter knitting I've done to date and started fresh, with new yarn. I was 100% ready to say good by to this and say hello to this This is Blue Moon Fiber's STR in Jonagold. I picked it up last weekend in Rhinebeck. Since the pattern calls for lightwe...

For the Rhinebeck trip I dutifully took two of my WIPS with me, the Project Stole and the Firestarter socks . But I also took along this yarn: It's been burning a hole in my stash for about a month. I picked up this lovely skein of Uruguayan, kettle dyed, merino wool from Malabrigo in the Marron Obscuro colorway during our day trip to Pattenworks last month. It has been meaning to be a dog sweater and after about five hours in the car on our way to and from Rhinebeck, it has magically turned into one: When fall comes back to central New England I'll get a picture of Ripley wearing it. Until then that pic will have to do. I used the same template as the second sweater I knit Ripley, with some minor alterations. First, I reduced the CO stitches by four to compensate for how much the second sweater expanded on Ripley as he wore it. The Manos del Uruguay yarn is very similar to the Malabrigo. It is a single ply merino wool. The Manos del Uruguay varies from sport to bulky weight...

We had beautiful, if unseasonably warm, weather for our trip west to the New York Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY. Although it didn't start out as well as it finished. When we left our house around 5:15 am it was very dark, 60 degrees, and muggy. Bleh. Hubby was understanding and let me knit by car light until the sun came up. We were deeply rewarded when in full sun we could see the blaring fall visage of the Berkshires. I forget, from lack of travelling, how fabulous the view is from the Massachusetts Turnpike (I-90). The mountains sported every vibrant, fall shade imaginable, moss green, yellow cab yellow, fiery red, and a panoply of every hue in between. The Taconic Expressway in New York was as beautiful, if not moreso, since the woods and rolling hills were much closer and gave us a far more intimate view than the Turnpike. Even with one missed turn, we made it to my Aunt's house by 8:00 am. Her favorite pastime is rug hooking. She's really good. She won a r...

For some knitters the summer slows them down, for me it sped up my knitting. I hate the heat and find myself locked indoors with the A/C. Now that the weather has cooled (at least for last week, it's supposed to 71 degrees tomorrow where the Rhinebeck festival is happening!) I can finally get out of my cocoon and this has definitely slowed down my knitting. But maybe it's not only the weather. The design element I've introduced to Blueberry Moon has left me a bit dispirited. I all but finished one wrist and I'm stalled. I'm not sure it's what I want and I'm too afraid to forge ahead and find myself needing to frog it again. So it's 'resting.' But my mind wasn't. Between this and the disapprobation I feel because of the Firestarter socks, I feel I've been thrown off my knitting groove. It took me a few days to remember knitting is supposed to be fun and that I had another great project I could work on that is all love, Project ...

Who can't help but pick up the excitement in the blogoshpere and at Ravelry regarding Rhinebeck, where New York States Sheep and Wool festival is happening this weekend. I've been vacillating all summer about whether I could handle such an overload of yarn and people and I didn't make up my mind until I had some serious help from my Aunt yesterday. I am going, but only for a morning. Tomorrow morning to be exact. It'll be a brutal 4:00 am wake up to get to my Aunt's and then to the festival by the 9:00 am opening, but I have no doubt it will be worth it. I don't intend to spend a lot of money, but from what I've read that type of belief usually turns out to be delusional. I don't know if festival virgins like myself are more susceptible, but we'll see come tomorrow afternoon, wont we. At the Rhinebeck Ravelry forum on how much others are spending I've read over and over again how people are refraining from buying sock yarn. That's my primary...

Feeling stupid makes me unfathomably angry. I just want to lash out at people. I came up against another mysterious segue in the Firestarter pattern Saturday night and revisiting it today on the KAL makes me want to punch someone in the face, thank you very much. I realize I haven't posted a single picture of this project here, just over at the KAL . This toe left me sleepless one night and angry for even longer. It's so pretty that the anger was quickly forgotten until I finished the gussets and began turning the heel. Living with a learning disability has gotten worse with age. Maybe it's because I have less patience now that I fully understand my limitations. When I was younger I just figured out ways to get around things or maybe it was that more often than not I was blissfully ignorant of my limitations. Now when they are wont to trip me up I feel like a cornered cat. My anger is ferocious. I have yet to find a coping mechanism for it. I began turning the hee...

I put Blueberry Moon to the side for a couple of weeks and let percolate my amorphous idea of adding some kind of textured accent to the bottom trim of the wrist and body. And though I love many stitch patterns from the Harmony Guide: 220 Aran Stitches I picked up last month, I'm suffering from an embossed twining vine leaf monomania. I made several aborted attempts on the sleeve of Blueberry Moon a couple of nights ago until it dawned on me to whip out the test yarn I purchased when I was working on the the shoulder seam. Test patterning showed instant progress and I was able to quickly find a variation of this leaf motif that would work knitting top down. Last night I concentrated on how to frame the motif, how to manage the increases and decreases and I think I'm all set to go forward on the actual garment this weekend. Big yeah!

I love my Project Stole . I love the yarn and the amazing texture of the pattern. The shawl is over 20 inches long at this point. I started the fifth ball of yarn on Saturday. I think I'm gonna need about 80 inches in pre-blocked length to get a finished length of at least 60 inches. This yarn is very springy and will probably respond strongly to blocking. Knitter's Review , reports that the yarn expands about 5% once it's been washed and blocked. I'm counting on this. Only 10 1/2 balls to go. Although I'm dying to wrap this around me, I'm enjoying every stitch and am in no rush to finish.

Months back I lamented the state of my circular needles: Even with the good advice that commentors left I was reluctant to make a decision on which system to invest in. On the one hand there was the cost of investing in a system and on the other hand there was the fear I'd invest in a system I was going to detest. You see I lack the skill to know what I actually like. I am notorious for going all out on an organizational scheme only to hate it because it is inefficient or inaccessible or something or other. Then I'd have to spend another small fortune on a wholly different organizational scheme. So a few weeks ago when I was binge spending I made a wise decision to utilize my loss of inhibition to buy something useful. I bought circ holders and lots of them. You know there's nothing more disappointing about an organization project than not having enough of whatever you need to finish the job. So waiting until I was all about throwing caution to the wind and buying more tha...

Blogging here feels like swimming through sand right now. Even reading other blogs has been slow going. There is knitting going on, but the details will have to be lost to time. Do you ever have dreams that are just circular, where you're doing the same thing over and over, and you feel half awake and aactually doing the thing you're only dreaming about over and over? Well last Friday I cast on the Chevron Scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts over and over and over in my sleep. It felt like the dream lasted all night. It was torturous waking up and not being able to actually cast on. IRL I kept the yarn safely in it's bin. I'll start when I'm finished with the ever lovely project stole.

I finished a second pair of socks this weekend! (Well, technically Monday, but it was a 3 day weekend for me.) I was able to start the yarn on the second sock at near the same spot as the first so the striping matches quite well. Unfortunately this Schachenmayr Nomotta Regia Silk self striping sock yarn has major, major flaws. The second ball was crap and crap in a big way. Not only was the intensity of the color on the second sock washed out, there are numerous spots where the dark colors leach into the lighter colorways, and on top of that more times than not the yarn had undyed sections where one color transitioned into the next. There's no way I can gift these now and I'm not happy about it. I was, however, very glad to get these done. Having three socks on needles at the same time was an exercise in stress for me. I hope to never do it again. I think one of each type of project, sweater, scarf, and sock, is well and good for me, but not more than one similar projec...

The trip to Patternworks this weekend piqued some self-reflection. Four months ago when I went up there for the first time I knew only a handful of luxury yarn brands and very little about the actual yarns themselves. This time I walked in and I saw so many familiar names, and even more familiar yarns, I kinda felt like a true knitter, as opposed to the knitting tourist I felt like in June. Yes I knew how to knit but the palette of my knitting was so limited. I totally have the blogosphere to thank. Reading other people's feelings and thoughts about patterns and yarns I began to lose my natural fear in trying new things. One $20 skein of CTH supersock yarn purchased last June was the first step and I hadn't looked back until Saturday's trek to Patternworks. It's been a great trip. Now on to actual knitting news: My second goal in going to Patternworks was to purchase some Koigu, or other fingering weight yarn, to complement this vivacious skein of Violas from MadelineT...