J Strizzy

Ice Cream And Sherbet

Just in time for the warm spring weather, a completed pair of wool socks:

Knitterly Things Vesper Sock Yarn, in Neapolitan, with Chocolate (my favorite part of Neapolitan) for the toes, heels, and cuffs.  Judy's Magic Cast-on for the toes, plain stockinette, my usual short-row heel, more stockinette, then a bit of ribbing and a tubular bind-off.  

And I started a new summer sweater, Anna Bell's Cherry, which in my case is Lemon:

RYC Cashcotton DK in Banana - pictured here is my first swatch, on size 6 needles, where the gauge is too small.  I reswatched with size 7s and it's better but still a little too small - but if I go up another needle size the fabric will be looser than I'd like, so I'm sticking with the 7s and knitting the pattern numbers for a couple of sizes up.  I'll be riding in the car for many many hours this weekend (and all during daylight hours) so I should be able to make some good progress.

Ack

I am not currently knitting anything.  Maryland Sheep & Wool is in four days, and I don't have a project to take with me.  Not good.

I finished knitting my Faroese lace shawl a couple of weeks ago, but I'm putting off blocking it because (a) I hate blocking, especially lace blocking since it requires more than just wetting and laying it out, and (b) there are three little holes where some kind of critter got to the shawl during its long years of hibernation in my basement, and I don't want to stretch the shawl out at all until I repair the holes. 

I was lucky.  The yarn is pretty grabby, so it hasn't raveled very far and the repair shouldn't be that difficult - it's really only one or two rows and two or three stitches for each hole.  But I've never tried fixing something like this, so I don't really have a good idea of where/how to start. 

And I feel some kind of project paralysis, an inability to start a new project until I bite the bullet and do this.  This is total BS, by the way, because I felt no compunction at all about starting - and finishing - those striped socks while the shawl was still unfinished (pictures? soon maybe), but nevertheless, there it is.  Maybe my subconscious just knows I will let the repair and blocking languish even longer if I'm allowed to start something new first.

But the fact is, I can't repair and block an alpaca lace shawl at the festival this weekend.  So here I go, diving into my Ravelry queue and my stash to pick out something new to knit.

And thinking about what I should look for at the festival.  I don't really want to buy much, not unless I see something spectacular that's also affordable.  I have a lot of yarn, and I bought a wheel last year, and I'm still working my snail-like way through the fiber I bought at Maryland LAST year (pro tip: move the wheel into the room with the television - a lot of spinning can be accomplished while working your way through the DVR backlog).

Who Needs A Churn?

I made butter.

Just because, to see if it was as easy as it seemed.  Last week seemed like a good time to try it, with Passover coming up - I always end up eating a lot of matzah-with-butter. 

It WAS easy, and it was delicious!  I say "was delicious" because it's all gone now; a pint of heavy cream yielded a little less than a cup of butter, which lasted me through the first four days of Passover.  But I also have about 2/3 cup of buttermilk, which I think I'll save until after Passover, to make biscuits with...

Tunnel. Light.

According to what I entered in Ravelry, I started this lace shawl nine and a half years ago.  My first shawl and my first lace project.  At the time, it was something I could only work on when absolutely nothing was going on around me - no conversation, no tv or podcasts (I'm not even sure podcasts existed then?), no extraneous things on my mind, and definitely not something I could take with me to work on anywhere but in the calm of my own apartment.

Since then, I've worked on it on and off but the pattern lost both its appeal and its challenge for me over time -- lately I've been working on it while watching tv and sitting in coffeeshops, which I never could have imagined back when I started it.  But I promised myself I'd finish it before the ten-year mark, and now I'm almost there. 

I was having trouble figuring out how big to make it, since the pattern is a little vague on that aspect, essentially telling the knitter to keep going until it's big enough, then knit the border.  I couldn't get a very good sense of how big it was, since it was all scrunched up on the circular needle and I had NO interest in putting all eight-hundred-and-some stitches onto waste yarn to stretch it out, only to have to get them all right back onto the needle.  I thought I was being smart when I realized I could look at other people's shawls on Ravelry and see how many repeats they'd done, but that was less helpful than I'd hoped because there aren't that many of this shawl (the Susan Shawl, from Myrna Stahman's Shawls and Scarves) on Ravelry, and almost every one of them was knit in a heavier weight yarn than I'm using.

So I just started the border when I felt like I'd had enough of the body, and when it looked roughly like I'd used most of my yarn but would have enough for the border.  I forgot to switch from the main chart to the ending chart for the last half-repeat of the body, but I don't think it matters that much.  I started noticing that the border motifs kind of line up with the body motifs but not exactly, and I have a feeling if I'd switched to that ending chart they would line up.  But I don't care enough to rip out the 20ish border repeats I've knit so far (the border is knit perpendicularly to the body and knit onto the body at the end of every other row), plus the final ten rows of the body.

So. Almost there. I'm probably a quarter to a third of the way through the border now, and now that the end is in sight, I've picked up speed.  Once this shawl is finished, I will have absolutely ZERO projects going, not even any that are in deep hibernation but technically I still consider them "in progress" because I eventually intend to go back to them.  This is such a freeing feeling - I can't remember the last time I had NOTHING in progress.  At least nine and a half years ago, I guess!

I Scream

Neapolitan socks.  Yummmm.  I know I said I was done with socks for a little while, but I was doing something the other day that required a lot of reading, just reading many many pages of fairly dry material, without writing anything or taking many notes or anything else active, and I found my mind wandering.  A lot.  It felt like I'd be able to focus better if I busied my hands, so I picked out a skein of sock yarn that didn't call for any stitch patterning and got to work.  I usually use a crochet provisional cast-on to knit a short-row toe, but I couldn't find my crochet hook, so I used Judy's Magic Cast-On.  I've done it before but somehow failed to notice how awesome it is.  I think this may be my new go-to sock toe.

Look At Some Stuff I Made (or, the title of every post on a craft-related blog)

First I have to get this out of the way: Starbucks bagels are not very good, but they are damn convenient.  Now I shall eat a homemade hamentaschen to make up for the not-very-good bagel I just ate.

Ok. On to finished (and almost finished) stuff.  I knit The Girl some socks out of the yarn left over from my last Year of Socks pair, since she asked so nicely (and by nicely, I mean "insistently and repeatedly, as only a two and a half year old can"):

But I'm wavering on whether to give them to her yet, since I don't have a corresponding pair for The Boy.  He said he didn't want me to knit him socks, but he's two and a half; as soon as he sees that his sister got a pair, it's likely that all previous protestations to the contrary will be forgotten and he will insist that he have knitted socks too. 

They're short little ankle socks because after knitting one full sock and the foot of the second, I ran out of yarn and had to rip out most of the leg portion of the first one in order to be able to finish the second.

And I pieced a quick patchwork quilt top last week for a baby who was born the week before:

I kept thinking I had more time before the baby was due, and then oops, he was born before I even started thinking about what to make for him.  I had a bunch of charm squares from a fabric swap last year, so I just put them together in a grid (simple = fast).  The seams don't all line up so well, but that's what you get when you're using squares cut by a dozen different people and you are too lazy to trim them all down to the same size! 

The next problem is that I have some flannel for the back, white with blue polka dots, but it's 45" wide and the quilt top is... 45.5".  So I'm going to make a strip of squares from some assorted flannel scraps I have, and put that down the middle of the back to give myself a couple of extra inches.  Last weekend and most of this week was pretty crazy around here, but I'm hoping to be able to finish this up this weekend and mail it before the little dude hits the three week mark.

Coming soon: I've been slogging away on the blue lace shawl I started almost ten years ago, my first lace shawl ever, that I don't even like that much anymore, but just want to be done with so I can stop thinking of it as something I have to finish.  I'm about to start the edging, and OMG I can't WAIT.  

Another One

Finished my Chartreuse block for the Bottled Rainbows quilt (pardon the fuzzy photo):

Two down, fourteen to go. 

One Down, Fifteen To Go

My first Bottled Rainbows block is complete!

And of course immediately after taking this picture I noticed I'd missed sewing down one of the pieces (lower right, the one with the pink bits). 

After finishing the first block, I've learned that arranging and trimming the scraps takes way longer than the actual sewing.  I made up the white block/solid border base first and sewed it down to the batting, then laid out the scraps, then trimmed them with my pinking shears and stuck them in place with a gluestick.  And let them sit that way, block folded in half, for a week while seemingly all of my free time got sucked into sick-kid-ville, which is why there's a crease down the middle.  Sewing everything down took all of 45 minutes.  So I think there's definitely hope for doing two blocks a few of the months, in order to get the full sixteen.

In other news, the kiddos are starting to appreciate mommy's knitting. :)  They grab for the sweaters I knit them as soon as they see them in the clean laundry, and while I was knitting my last pair of Year of Socks socks The Girl asked me to knit her socks like mine.  So I'm working on one more pair of socks, hoping I have enough leftover yarn to get two socks out of it. 

The Year That Was 2011

Time for another year-end roundup.  I've been waiting until the very end of this year to post it, because there are a bunch of projects that were either recently finished and not yet posted/photographed, or that were almost finished so I wanted to wait and see if they'd make it in.  And they did!  I finally finished my Versaille Shell, languishing for far too long, and I whipped up the Grey Loop in only a few days.

This could really use some better blocking.  I did a lazy, quick, wet-it-down-and-lay-it-out-flat blocking -- no measuring, no pins.  It fits ok, but would probably look a lot better after a proper blocking.

I love the Grey Loop.  Love it.  This is Classic Elite Wool Bam Boo, which has a very smooth hand and a nice drape, but I can imagine a really delicious version in a bulkier, loftier yarn too.

Now on to the roundup!  In 2011, I finished:

5.5 pairs of socks

2 toddler sweaters and 1 baby sweater

(I never got a picture of the baby sweater after I finished it)

2 adult sweaters

1 cowl and 1 pair of gloves

 

1 blanket

and 1 little elephant 

And some sewing:

1 baby quilt and 1 flannel rag quilt

 

and 2 matching toddler shirts

Five And A Half Pairs

I finished the final pair of socks in my self-imposed sock club a few days ago, and they're delightful.

They're sooo nice and soft and cozy, and they fit perfectly.  They don't exactly match up if you're looking at color placement, but I think they're close enough.  Plus they're so bright I can't imagine I'll be wearing them anywhere other than at home anyway.

This lattice stitch pattern was a great choice for this yarn - you definitely still see all the colors, but it breaks up the striping and pooling nicely.  From the way the non-latticed parts of the socks turned out, I don't think I would have liked the colorway as much in a plainer stitch.

And now I'm done with socks for a little while.  I knit five and a half pairs this year (I didn't like one of the patterns enough to knit the second sock), and aside from a few weeks here and there, I always had a sock project going.  And a deadline - one that was self-imposed but nonetheless felt a little oppressive.  Like I always had to work on the socks at the expense of other things.

Which is not to say I regret doing it; it was a nice change to be working through a long-term plan instead of wandering aimlessly.  And I knit some patterns I might not have otherwise, or might not have put as much thought into matching up them up with yarns to show off both to their best advantage. 

So here are the five and a half pairs of socks from my 2011 self-imposed sock club, all gathered together (click any of them for full size):

Left to right: Francie, by Rebekah Kerner; Blossom, by Stephanie van der Linden; Swirl Socks, by Maia Discoe; Concentric Socks, by Carissa Browning; Sunday Swing Socks, by Kristel Nyberg; and Leyburn Socks, by MintyFresh.