When Will it End

Well, November flew by me in a blur of caring for others.  I flew Washington D.C. to be with a friend as she underwent major back surgery and right before I left my mother had a small stroke.  Both are on the road to recovery as they say and are doing well.  During these events I spent a lot of time in hospitals waiting for one thing or another.  And while I think our healthcare system is majorly messed up in this country, all the caregivers, be they nurses, doctors or volunteers, were wonderfully kind of which I am so very grateful.  You would think I got lots of knitting done during all this "waiting", but alas no.  See, when you're with someone who needs distraction themselves your knitting simply takes a back seat.

Like many others this time of year I am working on gifts.  Many, oddly enough, are for friends of my friend who had back surgery.  She herself does not like Christmas, but I told her she could make it her own and start some of her own traditions.  This piqued her interest.  I thought I'd start her off in the role of elf and have her deliver some handmade gifts to her friends who have all been so very kind and welcoming to me.  Nothing big mind you.   Just a few of the above ornaments called Whigmarleerie by Kate Davies and a couple pairs of fingerless mitts.  Two people will get a bigger gift of a scarf each.  Now, at the time I promised these scarves last Spring I might have had a few glasses of wine in me and thought to myself "Sure.  Scarves are easy.  No problem!"  But, what I forgot is that they take forever.  I mean for-ev-er.  True I picked a pattern with a lot of moss stitch which was not the smartest move, but it was simple and handsome.  And "simple" is supposed to mean it's an easy knit right?  Wrong, it just means I'm bored now with 100 yards still to go.  Will it ever end?  Of course when it does I have the other "simple" yet boring to knit scarf that is 2/3's done.  Then there's my mom's sweater, slippers for my son and a vest for my husband.  

I sound like I'm complaining, and I am a wee bit, but I do enjoy the giving of these gifts so much.  Knitting for people who I know will wear, use and thoroughly enjoy what I give them brings me great pleasure.  In my book knitting equals love.  As most all knitters say too this time of year  "I promise myself that next year I'll start earlier, stick with it and get my gifts done early."  Probably won't happen, but dreaming is half the fun I think.  Here's wishing you all a lovely holiday season! 

Joining in with Ginny for Yarn Along.

YOP Update - Stages

 

I've been unsettled this past month with my knitting and blogging.  You may have noticed an absence here as I've let my twice weekly blog schedule slide.  I derail from projects very easily.  Usually all it takes is missing the deadline for a single blog post or setting down a knitting project for another.  But, under the general malaise the cause I believe was the knitting retreat I attended.  It was a wonderful experience to be sure, but while I tweak my knitting style to be more efficient, knitting seems a bit more like work than fun.  Knitting is simply harder right now as I try to lose old habits and gain new ones.  I think that along with having a lot of obligation knitting (2 scarves, 1 sweater, mittens, and a vest.  How did I ever think my gift knitting was almost done?) hanging over my head has really dampened my knitting mojo if you will.  

I managed to push through on a project, steadily work on another (slowly) and of course add yet another project.  The finished project is the hat Tensfield by Martina Behm.  It was knit from some yarn I won in a giveaway and is destined for my friend Amy's charity which provides hats and shawls for those undergoing chemo therapy here in the Twin Cities Area.  The hat is all garter stitch with clever short rows to give it it's form.  Being densely knit made the going slow, but the end result is very pleasing and hopefully very warm.

Next up is a scarf for a friend of a friend which is my slow and steady project.  it has become my morning ritual to sip my tea (Irish Breakfast with cream and maple syrup - sooooo good) while knitting a few rows.  The pattern is His (Birthday) Scarf by Monika Steinbauer and it's putting my new Norwegian purl to the test.  It's going to be tight to get a 60 inch scarf out of my 5 skeins, but hopefully the yarn will relax some in blocking. That is when I finally get to the blocking stage.  Sigh.

On to the new shall we?  Yes, let's!  You may remember the yellow yarn I was knitting a poncho out of - Purl Soho Flax Down?  Well, it shed quite badly which I thought would continue to annoy me in a poncho, but wouldn't be so bad in a cowl.  So, I frogged the Hugo poncho, sold all but one skein of the yarn (the skein from frogging), then paired it with a leftover skein of Tilli Tomas Raw Silk to get the yarn up to a bulky weight and voila we have the beginnings of an Arika Cowl by Jane Richmond.  It's hopefully going to be a quick project being knit with US 10 1/2 needles and only using about 200 yards.  We'll see if I get distracted yet again...

Lastly, I thought I'd leave you with a few pics of my son Sam and the Mighty Mississippi River.  We went on a home school field trip riverboat ride last week on a beautiful, albeit very cold, Autumn day.  We caught the paddle boat at Harriet Island in Saint Paul and took a leisurely 1 1/2 hour trip down to Historic Fort Snelling and back again.  We met some new people, learned a bit about the river as well as river boats and had a good time all around.  

Joining in with Ginny for Yarn Along.

YOP Update - Back and Forth

 

 

Hi everyone.  Well, it's been another week of bopping around like a ping pong ball from project to project.  Recently, I won a skein of yarn from the Great Outdoors KAL hosted by Knitting Butterflies and it arrived in the post this week.  It's very lovely and dyed by a fellow Minnesotan, but not quite my colors so I decided to knit it into a hat to donate for my friend Amy's Charity Group.  The yarn is a soft and squishy superwash merino so very well suited to a Chemo hat.  I choose a Martina Behm hat pattern that I've knit before that's garter stitch based to help me practice my new picking technique.

Speaking of new techniques, I also learned a trick at my retreat to do away with the ladders I get when I knit socks with double pointed needles.  You simply wrap or pick the yarn up having it cross over your needle in the opposite direction.  Normally I pick the yarn up from below to cross over ontop the needle.  So instead, on that first stitch of each needle I pick up the yarn from above to cross over going downwards.  This helps because it makes a shorter length of yarn in the stitch.  Does that make sense?  It also puts that first stitch on the needle twisted so you need to knit that stitch through the back loop to correct it's position.  As you can see I am only slightly into this sock so I can't say for certain how its working yet, but I'm excited to hopefully solve this long standing problem of mine.  

But, since socks are not on my year of projects list I felt I should get back to one of those projects and picked up the Dudester Scarf again.  This knitting project is the bane of my existence.  The pattern is super duper simple and yet I find myself making mistakes and having to perpetually tink back and re-knit.  I'm not sure what the hang up is but after an hour or so of frustration I decided to cast on for another project.  You see I have yet another scarf to knit for Christmas for yet another of my friend Anna's friends (as an aside don't ever make knitting commitments to others while under the influence of alcohol.  You feel good and magnanimous and forget that scarves aren't like cowls and take forever to knit.)  I was going to knit this pattern, but in the essence of time I chose this simpler one instead.  I'm knitting it with Zealana's Kauri worsted weight yarn and I really like the look; the possum hair makes a beautiful halo.  But, after purchasing this yarn it dawned on me that they kill the possums to get their hair and even though they are an incredible pest problem in New Zealand it does bother me so as I probably will not buy this yarn again. 

That's my knitting progress for this week.  I'm hoping the next one will have more focus and maybe a completed object - ah time will tell.  If you want to check out the other Year of Project participants you can find them here.  I'll leave you this week with a photo of my son and husband at the MN Renaissance Festival.  We're waiting for the jousting to begin and Sam is showing off his purchase of a dragon that can wrap around your neck or wrist to keep you company.  It was a wonderful day.

Lessons, Goodies and Progress

 

Hello everyone!  Yes, I am in good spirits after a lovely trip to WI for the Sheep and Wool Festival this past weekend.  We arrived in Jefferson on cool and breezy Thursday night to set up camp.  I needed to make an early start the next morning for the class I was attending.  It was a class on Natural Dyeing where we dyed skeins of yarn, then saddening those dyes with iron and finally over-dyeing with indigo.  I've taken a natural dyeing class before through Community Education, and done some natural dyeing on my own, but there is always more to learn and I definitely picked up some new knowledge this past weekend.  We used cochineal (bugs), madder (roots), logwood (tree), osage orange (tree) and pomegranate (plant) as our dyes. Each class member dyed 3 skeins in each of the colors, then we kept one skein "as is", re-dyed another in the same pot, but with added iron which "saddens" the color by graying and darkening it.  Then we took our last skein and over-dyed the original color with indigo.  The results I think are quite stunning in shade and variety.  The pomegranate (bottom three skeins) was a bit boring on it's own, but over-dyed with indigo it makes a lovely sage green.  This class really showed me the infinite possibilities available using only alum, cream of tartar, and iron as your mordants.  True, you can get even a wider array using copper, chrome and tin mordants, but these are dangerous to use for the dyer as well as the environment.  I'm really excited to get started on some more dyeing now that I'm home and already have some black walnuts lined up with which to begin.

The other great part about the Festival, besides all their Wonder of Wool classes, is the Marketplace of all things woolly or wool animal related  There was yarn and fiber in every imaginable shade, tools to create with fiber as well as tools for removing fiber, books, dyes, soaps, cheeses, meats, baskets, wool pillows, wool blankets and comforters and the most beautiful hooked wool rugs.  Really the rug hooking work was stunning and I was sorely tempted to give it a go, but resisted as I do not need another hobby.  With all the goodies available you'd think I'd come home with an armload of stuff, but I managed to only purchase a few things.  Soap was actually on my list to purchase thus I was happy when I found Maple Hill Farm's sheep milk soaps.  They only use essential oils which is a must for my husband who is very sensitive to scents and fragrances.  I chose unscented, lavender and peppermint to take home.  While I love handmade soap I hate paying for shipping soap as it's heavy and therefore expensive so buying it in person is my only option.  I'm hoping these three last until the next market I visit.  Since I was so excited to start dyeing I was very excited to find these 2 undyed skeins from Sheepish Creations.  The first is a BFL/Nylon tweed sock yarn which I'm planning to dye with indigo and the second is an incredibly soft (like dipping your hand in a vat of melted butter soft) single ply of a merino/silk blend which will be dyed with black walnuts for a rich brown.  At the end of my visit to the Marketplace I finally braved the beauty of the Fiber Optic booth and chose a Paintbox Gradient in the Copper to Verdigris colorway to take home.  It consists of 15 mini skeins of 30 yards each and will most likely become a shawl. 

With all that was going on while at the Festival and then while visiting Madison I got very little knitting done.  Oddly, I went for a project that I had not been planning on knitting the Dudester Scarf for my friend Anna's friend.  It's a super easy 4 line pattern, but I kept managing to still make mistakes and did quite a bit of tinking back.  It's knit in Kollage Yarns Scrumptious which is 70% angora and 30% silk.  Kinda an odd choice for a man's scarf, but he's Filipino like my husband who is super sensitive to wool,  so I thought a super soft yarn might be a good choice for him too.  We'll see what he thinks come Christmastime.  The scarf is a project on my Year of Projects list so there's a bit of headway there.  No finished objects to share with you, but I'm hoping to get something done by next week.  I won't even try to predict what it will be as I seem to change my mind all too often.  If you want to see the other YOP participants you can check them out here.  That about wraps it up for me.  Have a great week everyone!

Distractions form Distractions - Startitis Has Struck!

OMG!  I'm getting completely distracted from my distraction blanket knitting this week.  First, yarn arrived from eat.sleep.knit (don't you simply love that name for a yarn shop?) which had me casting on for this shawl/scarf immediately, then more yarn arrived in the mail and I found myself casting on and knitting another cozy coaster.  All the while my blanket is looking at me saying "You just have to knit one last ring Ann.  Finish me please!"  I can feel myself justifying the switch to the scarf as I "need" it for my trip at the end of the month, then the excuse to switch to the coaster is that it is small and wouldn't it be great to actually finish something.  Indeed it would, now if I can only focus!  

Both new yarns are golden yellow and super soft so I'm thinking that has something to do with it.  Minnesotans really need bright color in February, or at least this Minnesotan does.  The first yarn is from Handmaiden and it is a lovely blend of half wool half silk.  The best part about this yarn is that it was free.  Yes, free!  Eat.Sleep.Knit sends out a scratch off card with each of your orders and you can win lots of lovely prizes.  Now, I never gamble but yarn scratch off cards - yes please!  I've won a skein of yarn and a couple $5 store credits before, but this time around I won a $50 store credit!  It's been sitting in my account for almost two months as I schemed and planned what to purchase.  I pretty pleased with my choice and there's still leftover credit for something else in the future.  The second yarn is from Frog Tree and is a sport weight 100% Alpaca.  I'm holding the yarn double for the pattern and using larger needles as the original coaster I knit last year was so tiny it didn't even cover the bottom of my mug.  It's another double knit pattern like my mittens, but knit straight back and forth on a double pointed needle so much easier on the mind as well as the hands.

So, you can safely say startitis has come to roost at my house, but with no more yarn coming in the mail I'm hoping this next one will have me settling down to at least finishing one project.

Joining in with Linda for Creative Friday and Andrea for Fibre Arts Friday.

Cold Sheep Stash Update for May (in June)

 

 

Well, the month of May was so busy it just flew right by me with Mother's Day, friend's birthdays, scrapbooking ladies night and an awesome Unschooling conference.  So, I thought I'd catch you up on what I have been knitting and how this Cold Sheep experience is going.

Socks for my mom for Mother's Day were the first thing on my list.  I had some left over skeins of Madelinetosh Vintage which is a DK weight yarn that I had already made her a hat and two cowls from.  My mom loves hand knit socks so it was pretty easy to know how to use these skeins.  Here is the pattern I chose and you can see my modifications notes here.  First, I thought I'd only make one pair, but I was having so much fun I made two.  I did run out of the darker wine color, but luckily I had more of the rose yarn to finish the cuff.  The effect is rather sweet I think.  They came out thick and cushy; perfect for a Minnesota Winter.

Next, I knit a few chemo hats for my friend Amy's charity - Team Yarn.  I used this same pattern as before using up all my little scraps of the Madelinetosh Vintage yarn (I had 14 ends to weave in - yikes!)  Then, I knit another with some pretty Artyarn variegated yarn, but it came out a little short which bummed me out.  It is hard to measure a lace pattern I find, as there is so much wiggle room and stretch with the holes.

Last up is a project I did buy yarn for, but I'm not counting it as a divergence from my Cold Sheep project since it's for a High School Graduation gift for my oldest niece.  She wanted something handmade and "special" and I just didn't have a any yarn that would suit her.  You see she's a huge Superman fan so I'm knitting her a superman colored "school" striped scarf and a matching Superman hat with the "S" logo.  The college she chose is in northern Minnesota so she needs some warm acessories as she's walking from building to building this next winter.

The final photo is of some new yarn.  "New yarn?" you may ask.  Yup, I was hankering for some yarn to knit a couple of summery tops with and getting really close to purchasing (online shopping is dangerous!), but my dear sweet husband Dan saved me and purchased the yarn I wanted as my Mother's Day gift.  I was thrilled to say the least!  I'm hoping to knit this and this with those skeins.

Since this post is also for Yarn Along I'll quickly mention my latest book - Jane Austen's Persuasion.  I enjoyed re-reading Pride and Prejudice so much I thought I continue to read more of her books.  They are so well written and are so soothing after a day of video gaming with my son.  I am trying something new and reading a "free" version of this book with my Nook app on my Ipad.  Reading in bed is easier with the larger print and the light from the screen - I might be swayed to do this with more books.  We'll see...

  

My new Cold Sheep total is 113 days!  YAY!

Joining in with Ginny for Yarn Along

Gratitude Friday and Gift Giving - Mother's Day

Yes, Mother's Day was a while ago I know, but the finishing of the gifts just happened so I am including them in today's post.  My mom requested a purple and green hat to wear with her sage coat that she wears in the Fall and Spring.  She's a very matchy/matchy sort of person and all accessories must match her many coats.  This is fine by me as there is always something to make for her to fulfill this need.  

First, we glued ourselves to Etsy to find some hand spun yarn (I had made her a previous hat from hand spun yarn and she is now hooked) in the colors she wanted.  Etsy did not disappoint and we were able to find this colorway called "Clover" from Moondogswife.  It was a seductive blend of merino and silk - so incredibly soft!  Into the cart it went.

Next, we headed on over to Ravelry to find an appropriate pattern for the fingering weight yarn.  Hands down we both loved Bellefleur by Wooly Wormhead.  Beret styles are great if you tend to wear your long hair up like my mother; as there is ample room for your "bun" or 'twist" without your hair getting squashed flat.  

This pattern was very well written and was clear and concise.  That said, it was a difficult pattern for me and required ALL of my concentration.  There were many frogging moments when my mind wandered and I made mistakes.  I believe this was exacerbated by the multi colored yarn as it was hard to see where you were in the pattern, but this was what my mom asked for so I plugged away.  Actually, I became a bit obsessed with the hat and wouldn't touch any other knitting until I finished it (this is not at all like the normal me who jumps from project to project.)  When it was finally completed I must say I was mighty proud.  Below is my mom wearing minutes after I was finished.

I choose not to block it as my mother was perfectly content with how it was, and I didn't want to tempt fate and have it stretch out of shape.  My favorite element of the hat is the baby cable that works it's way from the ribbing all the way to the center.  So sweet.  My mother being a gardener likes the leaf motif the best.

There was still a fair amount of yarn left, and as I hate to let yarn bits just sit around I decided to make what I like to call a scarflette.  A scarflette is a narrow scarf that usually only makes it around your neck to tie once much like they wore scarves in the 1950's.  This one actually came out longer then I was anticipating making it around her neck twice.  The pattern was simply a one row pattern I made up.   

It came out rather pretty even if I do say so myself.

Now, onto my Gratitude List for the week:

1) The cooler weather we are experiencing in Minnesota after a truly ferocious July.  I can finally walk our black lab Easy without her panting like she's going to die.

2) My online homeschooling community which keeps me updated on all the great classes and events I can take Sam to this Fall.

3) My feet.  Yes, I love my feet.  There I've said it - phew that's a load off my mind :)  I love the way they look, how they get me places and how they are so flexible after all these years.  I repay them daily by giving them Birkenstocks to wear.  Not the most attractive shoe out there but my feet adore them even more than bare feet.

What are you grateful for this week?  Please share.  I'd love to here them!