Mikknit

I had a post almost completed and then I accidentally navigated away from this page, losing the post. Grr!

I’ll try to post later when I’m less irritated with myself.

I got an email from the processor saying that my two missing fleeces had been found. Hooray! The other two arrived the other day and they are gorgeous - if the other two are as gorgeous as the ones I already have in hand, I’m going to be very happy.

I just need to finish up what’s on the wheel before I can start this, though. Wish I could pull the wheel out during the day, but Arlo is still not to be trusted around the wheel.

I finished up a pair of socks yesterday and wound up a new ball of yarn. I thought it was so pretty I took a picture:

Wool/nylon blend from Scout’s Swag in the Green Bay colorway

I’m giving the Monkey pattern a go with this. So far, so good. I’m only through one pattern repeat, though, so we’ll see if it keeps looking good as I go along.

I think we’re heading off to pick strawberries later, so I should round these two up and pack up a snack bag so they don’t eat all the strawberries before they get into the bucket. Should be fun!

Summer is here and that means I’m spending a lot of time outside supervising the kids while they play in their little wading pool. Of course this also means that I’ve got a bit of knitting time on my hands, so it’s a good thing I have enough yarn here to last me for years! Spending the days outside also means that I’m not getting any housework done, but since we’re not inside much to mess it up, it can’t be that bad, right? Right? Yeah, I didn’t think so either. It’s a mess. But if I’m outside I don’t have to look at it, at least.

I’ve finished a couple pair of socks since my last post. Both were fun to knit but ultimately very tedious knitting. I suppose an 8-row repeat at the most will do that to you. Even the color changes of the Trekking weren’t enough to keep me excited. Sad, I know.

Trekking 100, Cloverleaf Eyelet Cable from Sensational Knitted Socks. Shocking, I know.

Meilenweit color 1313, 3×3 Cable with Moss Stitch from SKS. Again. This is more of a hot pink than it appears in the picture - I’m having some trouble getting the color right

Socks modeled by the lovely sock blockers Chris gave my for my birthday. I’m glad he did it, as I never would’ve been able to justify the purchase to myself. It seems a little silly to buy something like that for the sole purpose of displaying socks for blog photographs, but that’s what they’re best for! I’m very happy with them, though! He went all meta and bought the sock blockers with socks carved in them… Amusing as heck.

My Shapely Tee has stalled out - I got it up to the underarm bindoff the first time and realized that I’d gone way overboard with the short-row bust shaping. Ripped it back and did a more modest amount. Now it’s right in the bust but the waist is hitting me way too low, and this is *after* I shortened the torso to accommodate my freakishly short-waisted self. Apparently I didn’t shorten it enough. So I need to have a date with my tape measure and a notepad sometime soon, preferably tomorrow so I can maybe actually have a chance at finishing this in time.

Think I’ll go knit before it gets all hot & humid on me and I don’t want to think about wool.

Thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes! I had a fantastic day, despite threats of rain we only had a little bit of sprinkling and then the sun came out. Most of my family was going to be in town for my grandma’s memorial service, so I decided I should have a big party and invite them all. In my book, years ending in a 5 or a 0 are deserving of large parties, and it had been 5 years since the last one Extra points for the kids, who played on the playground for the entire time, pretty much leaving me alone to socialize. Their grandmas and one of my cousins kept them occupied, too, but they mostly just played and played and played.

Sunday wasn’t quite so fun, though all family gatherings turn into parties. We gathered at the MN Landscape Arboretum for the memorial service and to visit the bench that had been donated in memory of my grandparents. It’s on the Bog Trail, right near a bunch of trilliums, ladyslippers, and jack-in-the-pulpits, some of my Grandma’s favorite flowers. I only cried a little bit looking at those flowers. I cried a lot more looking at the picture slideshows that had been set up - seeing the old pictures of my grandparents was great, but seeing the ones as they got older and frailer just tore me up. I still have the image of them running their golf course - my grandma behind the bar and my grandpa out on the tractor, mowing the fairways. Grace asked about my grandma today, why she died. I’ve explained this so many times and I still have a hard time believing she’s gone. *Sigh*

Being stuck here wtih my thoughts is letting me get some knitting done, at least. I’ve started the Shapely Tee from White Lies Designs. I picked up some Silky Wool at Borealis’ sale this past weekend and it’s a touch lighter-weight than what’s called for in the pattern. Luckily, I’ve figured out that I can follow the numbers for the largest size and it’ll come out exactly in my size - great since I was struggling over which size to make, as one is 2″ smaller than my bust measurement and one 2″ too big. If only the boobs were smaller… I’ve made it a few inches into the sweater between last night and today - I should be ready to start the waist shaping decreases soon. I was a little worried that this’d drag on due to the fine gauge, but I think it’ll be okay as long as I have Tivo and Netflix to keep me going.

I’m also working on some pink cabled socks for myself - I started one last week and finished it on Monday, then started sock #2 that evening. I think these’ll be on hold for a bit, as I am planning on wearing the Shapely Tee to my sister’s wedding on July 7. That’s a lot of knitting in <6 weeks and not much time for socks. Sad, as I am truly hooked on sock-knitting. Will have to sneak in a few rounds here and there, I think.

I finished a new sweater for Grace last week (or maybe the week before), as well. Borealis is clearancing out the Ella Rae Classic Print yarn (love it!) and I picked up a few skeins in a colorway she'd like, as well as some for Arlo. I got started on her sweater right away, since I was procrastinating on finishing up something else. I think it maybe took 8 days at the most to finish. Something about variegated yarns just keeps me going. I certainly don't know any adults who could pull this off, though:

She looks so old in this picture, it just blows me away.

She doesn’t love the sweater, but it *is* the end of May (how the hell did that happen?) and it’ll be put away for fall. I’m sure she’ll appreciate it more when the weather cools off, though this is one warm-blooded kid. I think it turned out fine, I used the top-down raglan method from Barbara Walker’s Knitting From the Top. I lost track of where I was on the neckline increases, so it’s a little odd-shaped. I’m sure it’ll work out with wearing, and if not, oh well.

And now, since I am spending precious knitting time typing, I will sign off. I hope you all have a lovely Friday and a great weekend! I get to go to a baby shower, which should be great. I should probably figure out what sort of gift I’m taking, huh?

Still no camera, I have absolutely no idea where it could’ve gone.

And now I found out something incredibly stupid I did: When I finished the mystery project, I was itching to cast on a new lace project. I’d bought yarn for the Swallowtail Shawl from the Fall 2006 Interweave Knits, and after seeing a shop model of the shawl at Borealis, I decided to cast it on. I breezed through the first sections of the pattern, the snowdrop lace parts, and on to the lily of the valley chart. I have been struggling with the nupps, so my progress has slowed significantly. Tonight while putting Arlo to bed, I realized that I’ve been *knitting* my wrong side rows instead of *purling* them. Oh good lord - I have so much work to rip out! I’d been wondering why it didn’t look like the shawl in the picture (which I like better, by the way), and couldn’t quite chalk it up to the fact I was knitting it at a looser gauge. Well, that revelation just hit me like a ton of bricks, I tell you. I am kind of angry with myself and mortified as well - I like to think I’m a pretty advanced knitter and to have missed such an obvious thing in the chart is a pretty big mistake.

I’m not sure I can rip this out myself - I may have to get help. And alcohol.

Oh yes, I just went and quoted The Steve Miller Band. It is clearly too late for me to be up. My punishment? Having “Fly Like an Eagle” stuck in my head for the next 4 days. I’m going to cry.

So last weekend when I posted, I said I’d be back the following day to post some more pictures or something. So here I am more than a week later with no pictures for you. Sorry. I blame the long-term project I mentioned in that post. And also the danged kid having a birthday - I had to go and throw him a party and make a cake and stuff. Good thing he’s cute!

I am currently within sight of the end of that project, with about 14 more pattern repeats and a couple other things, and then the magic of blocking. I hope it’ll be done within the week, since Grace is heading off to do big kid things with my aunt this week and I’ll only have Arlo here. Since he can’t fight with himself (oh, but I’m sure he’ll try) I may get some time to knit here and there. While the majority of this project is not the sort of thing I could knit with kids around (which is why it took me 3 years to get this far), the part I’m on now is quite easy not as hard and I can figure out where I stopped if I have to put it down.

That’s as much as I’m going to say about that. I’m feeling sort of secretive about this project, probably because it’s been in the works for so long, and I don’t want to say what it is until it’s finished. I’ve said what it is in the past, so if you’re truly bored and want to search through my archives, go ahead. I’ll send you a cookie or something if you figure it out

I’ve also been working on a sock in Trekking 100. I’m finally down to the heel flap after God knows how many false starts, and I am pretty happy with how it’s looking. We’ll see if I get some more time to work on it today. It’d be nice, but if I can only work on the unnamed project that’s cool too.

I hope everyone has a great day and I hope I can be back with an FO post soon!

It’s been so long since I’ve posted that WordPress logged me out. Good thing I finally changed my password to something I could actually remember instead of the random string of numbers and letters it gives you when you reset it, eh?

As alluded to in the title, it’s been all socks, all the time around here. There are other projects started and stalled around here, sure, but the socks are the only things that get finished with any regularity. I guess it’s that they’re small, portable, generally mindless, and easy to set down mid-row - all important things when your children are completely insane.

My aunt presented me with a bag of KnitPicks sock yarn a while ago, telling me to pick out two pair’s worth of yarn. She then proceeded to point out which yarn she really liked, so of course I had to grab that one as well as one that appealed more to my tastes. What she chose was Dancing, a blend of cotton, wool, nylon, and elastic. I started the first one on our Amtrak trip a few weeks back and finished the pair about two weeks ago. I didn’t love this yarn, but it knit up into a nice fabric which I think will be very comfortable.

They look a little disproportionate, but between the ribbing and the elastic in the yarn, they pulled in quite a bit

She loves them, of course, but that goes without saying. I knit her her first pair of socks in 2002 and she’s been hooked ever since. Luckily, my cousin is a knitter too, so I’m not the only one responsible for keeping her in handknit socks!

Once those were finished, I cast on another pair in Trekking XXL, color 144. They were originally for my sister, but I remembered that I have another more appropriate pair of socks planned for her. Thank goodness my mom and my sister have similarly-sized feet - I didn’t have to rip them back when I changed my mind. These knit up incredibly quickly - I think the jacquard Trekking yarns are a touch thicker than the marled, stripey ones.

I briefly considered making them match, but eh, too fiddly. I think fraternal socks are more fun, anyhow

These took six days to knit, which definitely makes them among my fastest-knit socks. Maybe I should knit for people with feet smaller than mine more often! (Mine are 10″ around and 10″ long. Yay.)

I’ve been struggling with the next pair of socks since Tuesday. I picked out some Schaeffer Anne in a blinding colorway - hot pink, lime green, bright yellow, and purple. I think this may have been the first skein of yarn I bought when Borealis opened up in 2004, or at least it was among my very first purchases there. I swatched and realized I needed to knit it on size 0 needles instead of my usual size 1, so I started looking for a pattern to make it a little less mind-numbingly boring. Of course most patterns don’t work well with a heavily-variegated yarn like this, so I struck out twice before deciding to switch to a different yarn and try again. I picked out some lovely rose-colored wool (Meilenweit, maybe?) and knit a few pattern repeats before deciding that A) I didn’t love the pattern as much as I thought I would, and B) they were too small. B was no real surprise, since I had to leave off about 1/2″ worth of stitches to make the pattern fit. I already make my socks with 1/2″ negative ease, so taking off that extra 1/2″ didn’t do any good. I ripped that puppy back and the yarn has been added to the stash. I finally pulled out a skein of Trekking XXL in colorway 100, a recent purchase, and cast on the feather & fan-style pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks. I knit on that all over the MN Zoo on Friday, only to discover that I didn’t like the look of the lace when knit from the top down. Ripped it out and started the toe-up version this morning. I still haven’t gotten past the increases there, though I’ve been knitting all night.

What did I spend my evening knitting? It would be a well-aged UFO that’s been resurrected and has a deadline. I’m aiming to have it finished by Shepherd’s Harvest (Mother’s Day weekend), and I think I can do it. I’ll post more about it tomorrow (famous last words), since I’ve rambled quite enough for tonight.

I made a whirlwind tour of Wisconsin last week - over to Wausau on Tuesday to visit my sister and then attend the visitation for Chris’s grandma (sadly the kids and I weren’t able to attend the funeral). Home for one night, then Arlo and I got on the Amtrak to Milwaukee, where my sister met us the next day with Grace. Home again on Sunday. I’m still tired - that was a LOT of traveling in 6 days!

While I was in the Wausau area, I made a stop at Mielke’s Fiber Arts and picked up some pretty stuff:

An Adam’s Woodshop Emily in Purple Heart and Cherry with a Walnut spindle (I’m pretty sure Kerry is laughing at me right now)

Some soysilk top

Some yak top - not as soft as I’d guessed (of course, since it isn’t quiviut - duh)

Camel top, again not terribly soft. Should’ve gotten the baby camel.

50/50 merino/soysilk - I think this is going to get dyed in some purty green(s) and spun up for a lace project

I of course had to get started spinning on the new spindle right away. I’m really enjoying it, though I’m finding it’s not well-suited to my usual environment - when there’s an energetic 2yo running around grabbing at the spindle it’s hard to spin a consistent yarn! Imagine that.

The Yarn Harlot will be in town tonight and I’m heading out shortly to have dinner with Chris and others before the event. I expect to have some pictures to share tomorrow! I’m leaving the kids at home this time, so if there’s a kid up on stage with Stephanie it won’t be mine this time!

I know I’ve been knitting lately but I feel like I’m knitting into a black hole or else someone’s coming along and undoing my knitting when I turn my back. *Sigh*

I finished Arlo’s Wonderful Wallaby and there’s a picture waiting on the camera, which of course is out in the car. He likes it but it’s quite a bit too big for him, while the next smaller size is too small. *Sigh* I think he needs a cardigan. I’ll have to check the yardage of the yarn I finished the other day and see if it’d be enough. I think it was about 8oz, that *should* be enough, right?

I’ve started on Grace’s new Wallaby, using Ella Rae Classic Print in color 204 (pink, yellow, green). It’s my first time using this yarn and I’m finding it quite nice. The sweater is going very slowly, though, attributable to the fact that this is the second sweater in a row knit from the same pattern. *Yawn* I’d love to finish it by next week, since she’s going to spend a few days with my sister and I think it’d be nice for her to have this to wear then. Plus if I finish it I can justify buying some stuff at Herrschners and Black Purl while I’m over in Wisconsin.

I finished a sock, the Trekking 16 one I mentioned a while ago. I started the second one but ran into a knot that pulled out the center of the ball. I need to re-wind it but the ballwinder’s MIA. Sheesh.

It’s really been all about the spinning lately, though. I spun and plied 8oz of handpainted top from Creative Fibers. I need to go over one of the skeins and tighten up the plying, but I’ll have to wait until they’re dry - I didn’t notice how underplied it was until just now when I went downstairs to put in some laundry and to look at my skeins. One of them (the second one, oddly) is nicely plied but the first one is really loose and sloppy. Guess that’s what I get for lounging on the couch to ply while watching a movie instead of actually paying attention to my work. Ah well.

There’s also the fiber stuff - I got the last of the three Shetland fleeces washed, as well as a 1# bag of CVM that I bought at Shepherd’s Harvest in 2003 or 2004. That stuff is greasier than anything I’ve worked with before, especially after the Shetland which hardly has any lanolin at all. It’s so pretty and soft, though! The cats think so too - just about every time one of them goes down to the basement, I find chunks of the CVM fleece scattered around the basement. Stinkers. I found a plastic grocery bag full of clipped angora and two 1# balls of mohair top while I was cleaning up some of the mess down there last week, too. I haven’t a clue as to how long they’ve been there, or where the angora came from. I recall buying the mohair on ebay at some point, and that’s probably where the angora came from too, but when? No idea. I’ve got a plan to blend some of the angora with merino and silk - I have a pound of merino roving yet, and I got an ounce of tussah silk the other day to experiment with. I think I’m going to card up 2oz of the merino with an ounce each of the angora and silk. I’m trying to decide if I want to dye the wool and silk first - that’d definitely make it easier to tell if I’m making a homogeneous blend, but I’m not sure about color(s). Green is definitely up there, and the merino and silk will take the dye in a different way, plus the undyed angora will lighten up the color. There’s also the possibility of using different colors on the merino and silk, but that kind of scares me. But if I’m going to be a big chicken, I can use smaller amounts and if it looks like crap, oh well.

I need to go now before my kids kill each other or I am forced to throw them in the closet. We are going to IKEA with my friend Beth, who’s well past her due date and hoping to walk that baby out. I went over 42 weeks with Arlo, so I know how much fun she’s having. I don’t miss that (much).

Okay, I’m not *really* still snowed in but there’s still enough of the stuff on the ground to make me want to stay indoors for a while longer. Therefore, I’ve been busy with yarny pursuits.

I finished Chris’s Trekking socks last Wednesday:

Modeled picture taken after he couldn’t wait any longer to wear them

I think I could’ve used a few more stitches around on them but possibly would’ve run out of yarn had I done that. Damn men and their big feet!

I started a new pair of socks immediately after I finished those, as I was at the coffee shop with a friend and had childcare for another hour. They’re Trekking XXL in color 16, rainbow colors. I couldn’t find a color card with this colorway on it anywhere on the internets, who knows how old it is. I of course don’t have a picture for you today, but I’ll hopefully have the first one done soon and show you that. I’m using the garter rib pattern (such as it is) from Sensational Knitted Socks, which is easy but somewhat dull. A little more interesting than your standard 2×2 rib, at least.

I’ve also been spinning a bit. I finished spinnning the Cotton Candy roving and plied it. I ended up Navajo plying it, partly because I decided that’d look best, but also because I *really* enjoy Navajo plying. It’s somewhere around a worsted weight yarn, 230 yards to roughly 4oz. I dyed up another 8oz of roving in the same colors when I had childcare on Friday (I love that the kids’ grandmas enjoy spending time with them!) and once I get the current spinning project finished I’ll start on that. Eventually this will be a sweater for Grace, even though she asked for “pants made from knitting” - I hardly think this yarn would be suitable for pants for a 4 year old (an immobile baby, yes. An active big kid? No f-ing way). Probably for *next* fall, though. Gotta give myself time to spin it and time to think about styles & patterns. I took a couple of pictures of the yarn to share, though:

All nice and twisted up in its skein

All loose and pretty

I love how stretchy and squishy this yarn is! I’m itching to wind it into a ball and start swatching, but I have to finish Arlo’s sweater first. I cast on for the first sleeve of that today, finally.

This post brought to you by the almost-2yo boy child who has taken a miraculous, almost three-hour-long nap today. I just hear a peep from upstairs, so off I go. Good timing, kiddo!