So KnitPicky

Cold Snap

2009-10-23T19:13:00.004-06:00

The weather is finally turning cooler here, and it motivated me to finish up 2 projects. They were both cardigans that I had been on the verge of completing, but it was hard to get going on them when the weather was still in the 80's.

The one I'll share with you today is the Vine Lace Cardigan--it's the one I hinted at last time. I credit Janet for getting me fired up about this pattern. It had been on my Rav favorites list, which I use as my "I would like to knit this someday, maybe" list. But after she talked about it, the pattern just stuck in my head, and the next thing I knew, I was at my LYS picking out yarn!

This was a fun knit that only took 2 weeks. I had finished knitting it 3 days ago, but I always slack on putting on the buttons. This morning, the air was crisp and cool, and so it seemed like a good day for buttons!

Details and more pics are on Ravelry and in the gallery.

Indy Spirit

2009-10-17T18:45:00.012-06:00

We recently took a trip to Indianapolis and I thought I'd share a few pictures with you. One of the places we went was Conner Prarie, an interactive history museums depicting life in the 1800's. There, we watched people doing fun things like woodworking

and frying up puffball mushrooms.

And what 1800's experience would be complete without farm animals?

It was quite a neat place. Of course, since this is a knitting blog, I'll also mention that there was a basket of knitting casually left out in the sitting room of one of the houses.

If you think that's interesting, then you'd definitely want to see the "Loom Room." The room has a large loom, a spinning wheel and hanks of yarn dyed using various natural ingredients.

Not only did we see a life-sized loom room, but we saw a miniature one as well. These pictures come from a dollhouse display at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis.

Since travel time is just about synonymous with knitting time for us knitters, I did bring along a project, and I'll show you a sneak peek. Anyone recognize it? (no fair peeking at my Rav page)

Fall into a Routine

2009-09-22T22:08:00.004-06:00

Happy Autumn, Everyone! (Or at least everyone in the Northern Hemisphere). I celebrated the first day of Fall by pulling out a top that I had finished back in July. Yes, July. I bought the yarn at my LYS's Beat-the-Heat sale and whipped up the sweater in about a week. Now that was 2 months ago (to the day), and I'm just now taking pics. I guess the main reason is that the darn thing is made of wool. And I didn't want to wear wool in a Texas heat wave--not even in the air-conditioning, not even for a quick photo shoot.

Today the calendar said Autumn, and we did have a bit of a cold snap (and by "cold snap" I mean that the temperatures were not in the 90's), so I put it on. In fact, I wore it all day, and I really like it!

The pattern is Wendy Bernard's Ingenue top, from Custom Knits. More pics are on Rav and in the gallery. The yarn is Cascade 220 Superwash. The put-up for the Superwash is different than the regular 220; it's a loose ball rather than a hank. I'm not sure why they chose to make it this way, but I loved being able to pull it out and get knitting right away with no need for a ball winder. Yay! But as you get close to the end of a ball, you do end up with this floppy thing:

I am indebted to Debbie for showing me that I could use those mesh bags that small tomatoes come in to help keep my yarn from misbehaving. Voila!

I had gotten out of my usual knitting habits, but I'm back to my routine of knitting for a spell before bed. I had also moved away from my garment-knitting to work on my chicken-lizard-horse menagerie, but I'm back to the clothes again. I cast on tonight for a new top, which I'll save that for another post.

Lagniappe

2009-09-21T19:30:00.005-06:00

Well, I finished that Hobby Horse I wanted to knit. My 3-year-old loves it (and the 9-year-old has snuck in a couple of gallops too)! It is temporarily on a too-short stick, something we just happened to have around the house. I have to buy a better stick the next time I have a chance to go to shopping. In the meantime, my little one likes to take the horse's head off after she's ridden around, and she snuggles with it next to her on the couch or on the bed. It's freaky in a Godfather-like way yet cute and hilarious at the same time!

Now, as much as I like the horse, I also always like a bit of lagniappe. For those of you not from New Orleans, "lagniappe" means a little something extra. As I worked on this project, I couldn't help but think it would be so fun to add a little extra knitting magic and turn the horse into a unicorn. And here it is...

If you're interested in the add-on, I've detailed it on Ravelry and in the gallery.

A Friend In Need

2009-09-16T18:47:00.003-06:00

I have a dear friend who I first met 14 years ago when we were in school together. We have since gone our separate ways but have remained in touch. She lives 1,300 miles away, but we are still very close. So in the past couple of months while she has been having a hard time dealing with her husband's health issues, I did my best to be there for her and we talked often. But when things didn't go well and she was feeling more stressed, I felt pretty powerless to help her. Finally, I decided I should do what I always do when *I* need to de-stress: knit. I started this project on a whim, and this is what emerged. Her name is Liz and she likes lizards, so when a Rav search yielded a dishcloth pattern with a lizard graphic, I used it as the foundation for a simple stole. I hope it brings her as much comfort to have it as it brought me to knit it.

More info on Ravelry and in the gallery.

Fill in the Blanks

2009-09-15T09:38:00.004-06:00

I have not been blogging much lately, in part because I've not been knitting much lately. It's just a busy time of year. But things are settling down, and I am determined in the coming weeks to fill in some of these blanks on my Rav page:

I hope to have some updates soon!

Fresh Start

2009-09-02T15:54:00.014-06:00

As I helped my older daughter get ready for the beginning of school last week, I was reminded about how much I used to enjoy this process myself. For me, the prospect of a new year, with new school supplies and fresh clean notebooks was so exciting! (Why yes, I am a geek. Why do you ask? LOL!)

In the spirit of fresh starts, I did a light cleaning out of my knitting bag and a little reorganization. I thought I'd share with you what my supplies look like. This bag is something my sister gave to all of us in her bridal party on the occasion of her wedding. She had a destination wedding, and when we arrived at the hotel, we got a bag filled with beach-related goodies. It has a couple of compartments inside and plenty of room, so it serves well as a knitting bag for me. I keep a project or 2 in there, and this is what I carry to my knitting group and what I pack for car rides or to bring on the plane with me when I travel.

Inside I have my Denise needle kit. Other than a pair of straight size 8's I picked up at a Michael's, these were the first needles I bought. For along time, they were the only needles I owned, and I did absolutely everything with them. I used unattached needle tips as cable needles and did magic loop when a pattern called for dpn's. I only bought more needles when I started knitting finer gauges and needed size 4 needles and smaller. These are still the only needles I have for sizes 5-17.

The fact that there are hardly any cords in the box is a testament to my inability to be monogamous with my projects. Most of the cords are in use!

And then there is this binder.

It stores photocopies of the patterns I'm working on. I prefer to use copies so I can mark them up and not have to worry about being gentle with a book or pamphlet. The patterns are in little plastic sleeves and I use highlighter tape to help me keep track of where I am. I also found these cute little pouches at an office supply store and put my supplies in them. What's in here is basically my entire collection of knitting tools (minus the books and yarn of course).

This pouch holds the odds and ends--scissors, tape measure, row counter, a couple of crochet hooks, a few tapestry needles, a bit of scrap yarn, and a film canister full of multi-purpose safety pins.

This one is for the extra-large Denise needle tips that I bought to supplement those in the original kit, along with another set of cords.

And this last pouch is for the few other circular needles I have (there are 2 more in use).

That's it! Hope you enjoyed the tour :-)

In addition to tidying up my knitting bag, I pulled out some yarn from my stash that I just don't think I will ever use. I was trying to decide what to do with the yarn, and in a bit of serendipity, I received an email yesterday alerting me to a project called Iraqi Bundles of Love. It is a way to spread some goodwill to fellow knitters in Iraq not lucky enough to have the problem of what to do with excess yarn. And for those of you who have a yarn *and* a fabric stash? They're looking for that too. I hope you'll check it out.

Stuffed Bird

2009-08-30T20:05:00.005-06:00

I'm not much of a cook, so I don't think I could prepare a stuffed bird you could eat. But a knit one? That, I can do.

A little while ago, I made Henrietta as a gift for my Grandmother's birthday. I liked that chicken so much, I had to make another for myself. As striking as the original color scheme was, it wasn't a great match for my kitchen, so I made one with different colors. I named this chicken Babs, in honor of the knitting chicken from the movie Chicken Run.

I love that this project serves as its own knitting basket a few inches into the body. I could stuff my yarns right in there.

And then I stuffed the chicken with wads of socks in order to steam block it.

For the final stuffing process, I put a layer of polyfill on the bottom before pouring in a bunch of poly pellets. I did that with Henrietta too, and it helped prevent the pellets from coming out. After that, it's more and more polyfill...then voila!

More pictures are on Ravelry and the gallery.

In Midstream

2009-08-18T07:56:00.003-06:00

Thank you all for the kind words on Flutter. I'm wearing it today and it is comfy :-)

Meanwhile, I have been plugging away on my husband's cardigan. This morning, I happily announced:

"I managed to finish the second shoulder last night. So now, we just have to decide how high you want the collar, and then I do the buttonband, and that's it!"

"Buttonband? It's going to have buttons? I thought it would have a zipper."

Arghhhh! No wonder you're not supposed to knit sweaters for your man till there is a some sort of cultural/religious bond that is acts as a barrier to keep you from heading for the hills when you hear something like that, right?

Okay, folks. I knit this following the design elements for Jared Flood's Big Blue. This is knit back-and-forth, with a 2-inch gap that I left in the front for the buttonband. Any suggestions on what I do now? I know I need to block this first to see what I really have to work with. I'm guessing I need to pick up along the edges and knit some sort of zipper facing (which I've not made before). And I'm guessing it should be in stockinette because I'm imagining that ribbing would flare out once I tried to attach a zipper. But maybe not? Should I go for 1" facings and make it symmetric? Or a 2" facing on one side for an asymmetric opening? Any input is appreciated.

In No Particular Order

2009-08-16T19:17:00.002-06:00

I have 2 new FO's to share, but I don't have modeled pics of the first one. It's 100% wool, and even though it's short sleeves, and even though I'd be wearing it inside in the air conditioning, I just couldn't bring myself to put it on to take some pics. Instead, here's the more recent FO, which is a bit more weather-appropriate.

This is Flutter, from Norah Gaughan Vol. 4. I had originally bought the booklet to make Flower Child, which I think is really ingenious. But I still haven't found a yarn that speaks to me for that top, so I made this one instead.

It was a nice and easy knit, and for once, no errata. Hurray! More details on Ravelry and in the gallery.

I'll try to psych myself up to modeling the other FO sometime later this week.

Compare & Contrast

2009-07-16T10:20:00.002-06:00

I remember doing an experiment in middle school in which we had to submerge our right hands into some fairly hot water and our left hands into some icy cold water. After a minute or so, we pulled our hands out and held both ends of a metal pipe at room temperature. To our warm right hands, the pipe felt cold, but to our cold left hands, the pipe felt warm. It's all relative, right?

I made the Akomeogi top using Louet Euroflax, and it was my first time using that yarn. My washed swatch, along with everything I'd read, helped me believe that the fabric would eventually get softer, but it was pretty tough working with that yarn on size 2's. I could only do short spurts at a time, and then I'd have to take a break and work on something else. By comparison, the other yarns I was using--Cascade 220 for Henrietta, Kathmandu DK for my husband's cardigan, and even Cotton Glace for Anemone--felt sooooo soft and luxurious! Since I was doing stranded colorwork with the Cascade 220, there were 2 layers, and it felt incredibly plushy and cloud-like, comparable to the best, fluffiest cashmere, LOL!

But just as the brain picks up on contrast, it can also learn to accommodate. By the time I made my way about 4" into the body of Akomeogi, I was getting used to the yarn, and I could work on it for longer periods of time. I felt I was making good progress, when I suddenly encountered a contrast that I could not ignore:

Yup, those would be 2 different colors of yarn. The cones shipped together and were individually wrapped in plastic. And no, I did not open them both up to check when I first got them. I was so anxious to start that I just opened up the first cone and away I went. When I finally thought to unwrap the second cone, I was crestfallen. I had already done about 8" of the body, but I had to stop--there was no point in going on if I couldn't get matching yarn. The store I ordered from was really great and eventually got me what I needed, but it took some time, and the project hibernated till the second yarn arrived. If I hadn't been doing this as a KAL with Sylphette (Rav link), I would have completely lost steam at that point. But thankfully, her progress helped inspire me to keep going, and now here's the result:

You can get all the excruciating details on Ravelry and in the gallery if you want them. I'm happy with this project and am now undeterred by the yarn. In fact, I am thinking about buying some more today for Vesper (Rav link) if my LYS has the color I want.

Knit Unto Others

2009-07-08T18:29:00.003-06:00

As you know, most of my knitting is for myself. I'd like to think that I'm not selfish in general, but I am with my knitting. I guess I want to know that the final product will fit, will be useful, and will be appreciated. And if I make it for myself, then I know that it will be! I do get urges, though, to make gifts. A couple of Christmases ago, I did some marathon knitting and made something for just about everyone in my extended family. It was very gratifying, but I decided not to bunch it up like that again. So this year, I am trying to make things as gifts throughout the year, aiming for birthdays.

Henrietta went to my Grandmother, who really loved it! For my mom, I made a Flutter Scarf that I think is a nice accent to all the black & white in her wardrobe.

For more info on this FO, see Ravelry or the gallery.

I've got another gift on the needles. I am working on a cardigan for my husband, a la Jared Flood's Big Blue.

This will only be the second thing I've ever made for him. The first was a simple k3p3 ribbed scarf.

I think this was made from Reynold's Odyssey, but I'm not sure because it was one of my first projects and that was before I knew to keep track of such things. He likes it. He just doesn't wear it. We live in the South and he is just one of those people who never feel really cold. It doesn't occur to him to use a scarf (the only time he ever really wore scarves was when he lived in England). But the man does wear light jackets, so maybe the new sweater will get some use!

I have some other ideas going too but haven't cast on yet. I have 2 dress designs for my 3-year-old swirling around in my head, and an illusion scarf idea for the 9-year-old as well. And when I saw this hobby horse, I just knew I have to make it eventually.

Not All In My Head

2009-07-04T13:21:00.003-06:00

Once upon a time, I was pretty decent at math. I could do all sorts of calculations in my head without working too hard at it. But now, 2 kids and multiple distractions later, I find it too taxing! So when I encountered the directions for the front section of Akomeogi, I realized there were just too many things going on at the same time for me to keep track of them all. On top of that, I wanted to make some mods and had to figure out how to make them work. So, I printed out some graph paper and drew myself a little diagram.

It's not a standard knitting chart, but it just helps me to know, row by row, where I decided to do the decreases, make the short-row pleats, and place the buttons. The diagram was a real lifesaver! (Or at least, a mind-saver). I'm pleased with how it's turning out so far. This picture is pre-blocking and pre-buttons. Now it's on to the sleeves.

P.S. Happy 4th of July to those of you in the States!

Monkey See, Monkey Do

2009-06-04T20:09:00.004-06:00

Soon after I learned to knit, I taught my then-5-year-old daughter to knit as well. She picked it up quickly and liked working alongside me, albeit only for a few minutes at a time :-)

But later that year, I got pregnant, got nauseous, and then quit knitting for 1-1/2 years because I had such a strong mental association with knitting and nausea. And my daughter, who is 9 now, stopped knitting altogether too. It surprised me, then, when she asked me to help her find a project to knit for her teacher as part of an end-of-year gift. She told me that after watching Mr. Magorium's Emporium, the teacher's young daughter fell in love with sock monkeys, so she wanted to knit them a sock monkey. This was not a very realistic option given our time frame, so we settled on a sock-monkey-inspired coffee cup sleeve. She set to work and knit this up gradually over the course of a couple of weeks. All I did was help with the sewing.

If you've got time to monkey around, you can check out more details on Ravelry and in the gallery.

On Track

2009-05-27T19:11:00.004-06:00

You knew, didn't you, when I said back in the beginning of the month that I was just about to finish Emily, that I was jinxing myself. Right? Of course!

Wait a minute. You knew?! You could have warned me! :-) It's okay, though. I didn't really run into a problem per se, I just got distracted by other pretty shiny things. But over on Ravelry, I'm participating in the NaKniSweMoDo group --that's National Knit a Sweater a Month Dodecathon--and I figured since It's the end of May, I'd better try to stay on track and finish up my 5th one. It’s not my best knitting, ‘cause I got sloppy in the front by the neckline :-( I blocked and fudged as much as I could after the fact ‘cause I really did not feel like redoing it. There are too many other interesting things to knit that are calling out to me!

More details are on Ravelry and in the gallery. And yes, I am getting a lot of mileage out of that J. Crew belt that I got to wear with Calm.

Birds of a Feather

2009-05-25T10:24:00.003-06:00

My grandmother has a country kitchen--complete with a red wall and cute decorative chicken accessories. And so when I saw Michelle's fabulous take on the Knit Chicken pattern from Blue Sky Alpacas, well of course I had to make it for Grandma! The pattern is cute, but the chart just makes it! I used a different yarn than she did but otherwise copied everything verbatim.

It's silly, I know, but I cannot tell you how much I love this chicken! And since Michelle was so generous as to post her chart on her blog, I predict flocks of these little gals will soon be showing up everywhere! More details on my little Henrietta (yes, that is her name), are on Ravelry and in the gallery.

Double-take

2009-05-19T08:38:00.003-06:00

I use Bloglines as my blog reader. Besides the myriad knitting blogs, I also follow a variety of other blogs--from one about iPhone apps to the White House blog. I was surprised when I saw this entry on "Engagement, Women, Health Care, and Yarn". I thought Bloglines had messed up and mixed up a feed. What were pictures of walls of yarn doing on the White House blog? It turns out that Stitch DC was the site for a round-table discussion with HHS Secretary Sebelius. How cool! Now, I would have been a lot more impressed if anyone had been holding needles and yarn in their hands :-)

A Stitch A Day...

2009-05-07T08:18:00.002-06:00

Watch CBS Videos Online

When 6 of One is Not a Half-dozen of the Other

2009-05-06T17:25:00.000-06:00

I am currently working on Emily, from Kim Hargreave's The Dark House Collection. One of the lovely details is the poufy sleeves, and this got me to thinking about how the pouf is constructed. It's basically increases and decreases, but how they are arranged makes a difference. So let's say you have a sleeve of, say, 100 stitches, and a cuff of, say, 50 stitches. There are several ways you can achieve this:

1. Knit the whole thing bottom-up, starting with 50 st for the cuff and then doubling the number of stitches once you reach the sleeve, or

2. Knit the whole thing top-down, decreasing the number of stitches you work from 100 down to 50 on the row where the cuffs start, or

3. Knit the main portion of the sleeve bottom-up, starting with 100 stitches. Come back when you're done, picking up 100 stitches for the cuff and then immediately decreasing the stitches by half on the next row. You'd then complete the remainder of the cuff knitting top-down. Well, this is essentially what the instructions on Emily tell you to do. Even though all 3 of these options are numerically the same, the results look different. To my eye, this method provides better definition between the sleeve and the cuff. Picking up stitches over the cast-on edge adds stability. However, there is still some flaring of the upper part of the cuff. If I were a really conscientious blogger, I would have taken a picture so you could see for yourself, but since I didn't think to do it at the time, you'll just have to trust me :-)

4. I found that my favorite way to achieve a crisp transition between the sleeve and the cuff is to start with the sleeve, casting on only half the number of stitches you need and then in your first row, doing a kfb into each stitch. After you are done with the sleeve, you go back and pick up the number of stitches you need for the cuff. No flaring at all. Yay!

I'll be done with Emily soon and hope to have an FO pic by next week (famous last words).

Aww, shucks!

2009-05-05T20:07:00.005-06:00

I was so honored that Yo-El gave me this blogger award. That was 2 months ago, though, and I know she must have thought I forgot (wink!), but I didn't. I just felt it was too ironic to post about it since I wasn't posting *anything* for awhile there, LOL! But since I've had some things to talk about lately, I thought I'd dust off the trophy and show it to y'all.

1. Copy the award to your site
2. Link to the person from whom you received the award
3. Nominate 7 other bloggers
4. Link to those on your blog
5. Leave a message on the blogs you nominated

Okay, I follow many blogs. So really, this is just a sampling...in alphabetical order

1. Angel Knits: beautiful items, so well-executed! I always leave her blog thinking, "oooh, I want one of those too!." 'Nuff said.

2. Canary Knits: she churns out an incredible array of really beautiful patterns. *And* she features other indie designers on her blog on Fridays, so creativity is oozing out of every pixel of that site!

3. Inspired by Life: Steph has come up with some amazing-looking creations inspired by some of my fav stores, including Anthropologie. It was her mods that I copied on the Cropped Duster.

4. Knit Creations of a Curious Mind: I've admired Olga's work for some time, and I'm so excited for her that her patterns are being published. I just finished the Petal Halter, of course, but I'm also about to embark on Akomeogi and have had the Balloon-Sleeve Jacket on my queue. It's also fun to look at the advant-garde fashions she finds.

5. Peacock Chic: She has veered more towards sewing of late, but there is still plenty of knitting and definitely no lack of creative inspiration. There is always something crafty and interesting going on. I know one of these days she will inspire me to pull out my sewing machine and grab a Burda pattern or something! Oh, and I did get a Ped-Egg after reading what she wrote about them, LOL!

And this is where I show my Kreativ bona fides by going outside the rules and picking 2 Ravelers who don't have blogs. If you visit their pattern pages, I think you'll agree that there is enough creativity there to fill up many, many posts!

6. Larisa: has a ridiculous number of projects, all of which are stunning and have perfect finishing. I suspect she knits in her sleep :-)

7. Sylphette: Sarah and I jokingly call each other knitting twins because so much of our project/fav/queue pages overlap. I'll stumble on someone else's project that I love, and I'll go to leave a comment, only to find that she had left one already. So, we share a lot of the same tastes, but she is much more prolific than I am! We are going to do a little mini-KAL together, and I just hope I can keep up :-)

Leap of Faith

2009-05-02T17:00:00.004-06:00

I am generally not much of a risk-taker. I don't ride roller coasters. Or even spinning teacup rides. My husband manages our stock portfolio because I don't have the stomach for it. But in knitting? Knitting is where I dare to be just a tad more adventurous.

I love experimenting with fresh-off-the-press patterns and those that are on the road less traveled. I like playing with interesting construction and unique geometry. After all, it's only yarn. So, when I saw Olga's Petal Halter in the IK Spring issue, I of course had to knit it.

I loved doing the modular petals. They are the perfect portable project--small and easy to memorize. I almost always block and seam as I go along in a project, so that I can ensure a good fit, but I had to take a leap of faith with this one since it's really hard to try on properly until you're all done. I did run into a sizing problem (of my own making, not the pattern's), but I rigged up a solution and it worked out okay. I did also tink with the straps. Understand that my posture is not the best, and I really had a feeling that the original straps would have worked to accentuate this. So, I fiddled around a bit and ended up doing a little cord.

For the curious, more info is on Ravelry and in the gallery.

By A Thread

2009-04-29T20:08:00.005-06:00

I have not been very monogamous with my knitting. I keep picking things up and setting them down, but I finally got something finished. It was a nail-biter, though, because I was afraid I'd run out of yarn. I didn't, but this is all I have left:

Close.

The yarn is some Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy that I picked up on clearance from my LYS, and this is a vintage cowl top pattern from A Stitch in Time. There were some problems with the pattern, but I really like top itself. I wore it all day today and it was really light, airy, and comfy!

Of course, I have more details on Ravelry and in the gallery. But I did want to highlight a little something here. You are supposed to do a crochet edging to neaten things up around the neckline, but luckily, I didn't have to do that (I would not have had enough yarn!). How did I manage that? It was thanks to TechKnitter's excellent tutorials on how to make a nice chain bind off at the beginning and end of a neckline (or any other place when you're bindng off in the middle of a row. You avoid that unsightly gap. I highly recommend those entries, and really the blog in general, as must-reads.

Bit by Bit

2009-03-31T18:14:00.006-06:00

For a variety of reasons, I've stalled out on most of my knitting. But I try to remind myself that it's not just about the FO, right? The whole process of knitting taking things just one stitch at a time, bit by bit. I was reminded of this when Norah Gaughan posted about the Hexagaughan afghan she received. This was a collaborative effort from many of us on her Ravelry fan group. This was the brainchild of J. Reilly and was an ambitious enterprise.

My own little contribution was extremely modest. This is a hexagon made following the Spiral Scarf pattern from Knitting Nature (by Norah of course). And coincidentally, I used some Cascade 220 Heathers that I had left over from making Norah's Loppem design.

It was a fun little thing to knit, but by itself, it's nothing to speak of. But as the individual pieces trickled in from several different countries, and as J. Reilly set to work assembling them all...

Yup! Bit by bit! Gotta remember that.

(Many thanks to J. Reilly--not only for her work on coordinating and assembling the afghan, but also for her generosity in allowing her pictures to be used.)

Spit Decision

2009-03-12T19:02:00.003-06:00

Well, there I was in the car line to pick up my daughter. School had not actually let out yet, so it was going to be at least another 15 minutes before I could move anywhere. Perfect time to knit! I had Anise with me, which uses Rowan Big Wool. This is a great yarn, but there are only 87 yards in each ball. That means that you end up having to get a new ball fairly frequently. And as luck would have it, I was at a place where I needed to join in a new ball of yarn. What to do, what to do? If I left ends to be woven in, it wouldn't look very good with such bulky yarn. I had been using a felted join, and I usually use water from the faucet to achieve this. But I had no water with me. I had a juice box, but I decided it probably wouldn't be a good idea to saturate my yarn ends with apple juice. So the only liquid I had with me? Spit. Now, many people swear by it and argue that the pH of spit helps to make a more secure felted join than regular water, etc. But I don't live in a community that condones much public spitting, so I was in a quandary. Should I? Shouldn't I? I looked around. A fellow parent standing on the sidewalk smiled and waved. I sheepishly returned the social exchange and waited till she turned her attention elsewhere. Another quick look around, and then I quickly tried to surreptitiously spit on my yarn. But no, it was not enough. So I had to muster up the courage to hawk another wad of spit. And another. There. Done!

For a couple of days, I was paranoid that my daughter would come home and tell me she was socially devastated because some friend heard from some teacher who heard from someone's mom that I had been spitting in my car. Luckily, that hasn't happened. Yet. For my courage, Mother Nature rewarded me with a quick cold snap. Not only is it a break from the 80-degree whether we've been having, but it is also a chance to actually wear Anise. (Don't worry, it's been washed)

As always, more info in the gallery and on Ravelry.

Spring Cleaning

2009-03-09T21:21:00.000-06:00

We kept flirting with cooler weather here for awhile, but the plants don't lie. It's definitely spring time. Check out my red bud tree:

With this, my thoughts turn to spring cleaning of my WIP basket. For most of last year, I was pretty monogamous with my projects. But over the last few months, I've had a bit of startitis. Now it's time to finish up some things to make room for new knits.

I've been carrying this scarf around for months and got very close to finishing it while at Madrona. All it lacked was an extra inch, plus the fringe. So I decided to delay no longer and got it done just in time to fling it around my neck for the mid 40's-low 50's temperatures last week (I prefer to wear a scarf and forgo any sort of jacket). We're in the 80's now, so I'm glad I got a chance to wear it a bit.

It is, of course, the popular Shifting Sands scarf. More details on Ravelry and in the gallery.