Carina Spencer Cowl Kick

These projects were not finished during the Spring Cleaning, but I realized I never blogged them. I'm on a Carina Spencer kick, apparently. Her patterns are lovely and extremely clear and well-written. The following two patterns are ones that caught my eye on Ravelry while they were still in the test-knitting stage, and I cast on for them relatively quickly once they were released.

This is the Dovetail Cowl, knit with three skeins of Cascade Eco Duo:




And this is Zuzu's Petals, an ingenious little design that combines the best of lace shawls and cowls. I liked it so much, I knit it twice, once in the gorgeously lush Road to China Light in Moonstone, and once in Silky Malabrigo.

Deepest Stash

I have, inadvertently, been knitting from my deepest, darkest stash lately. I bought one solitary skein of Brooks Farm Four Play, a wool and silk blend, at the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival at least three years ago. The put-up at 270 yards per skein is generous, but the "perfect" project never came along, and it's been languishing ever since. The yarn has a delicate sheen from the silk, and the tonal dye is beautiful and subtle.

On Oscar night, I decided that I was just going to use this yarn, and I cast on for 198 Yards of Heaven.  Because I had extra yardage, I did an extra pattern repeat, but ran out halfway through the edging. I also realized one row into the edging, that the pattern made no sense, and when I checked Ravelry, I saw that the pattern I'd printed out a year ago had been revised with a completely different edge. So much for printing and organizing patterns when I see them. I ran out of yarn halfway through the edging, but I like the final results better than the original edging, which looks heavy and takes away from the main motif.

iPhone photo

The whole thing

Obligatory Hipstamatic Shot

Unfortunately, because it's only 270 yards, it doesn't count for 11 Shawls in 2011. Still, other than the pattern discrepancy, it was a quick and easy project and an excellent match of Deepest Stash to pattern.

On the Third Day of Christmas

I finished the Christmas knitting! Truly, it's a new record for me. My father's World War II Watch Cap was actually completed on Christmas Eve.

 

I finished knitting my mother's Traveling Woman on December 26. This meant I actually handed my mother a gift bag with the project still on the needles on Christmas Day.  Oh well. After a few days of tearing apart my so-called "yarn room," I finally found my blocking pins. With The Preschooler at Bubba's, I had some peace and quiet this morning to block out the shawl.

Finally, yesterday, I went to the jeweler's, with moral support from Steven, to have my rings cut off. I haven't been able to get them reliably on and off for over a year, and with last weekend's Christmas basically serving as a Festival of Ham and Salty Snax, my fingers swelled up to painful proportions. Because I'm pregnant, I knew it would get worse before it got better, so off they came. Steven insists I show you a picture of the immediate aftermath.

Happy Mother's Day

This is what I made my mother: a Shetland Triangle in Madeline Tosh Sock in Oxblood.

 This is what The Preschooler made for me. I love the "mixed-media" piece.

Sheep and Wool

So I have, like, degrees in Women's Studies. Yet I think they will be revoked because I wore this to Maryland Sheep and Wool this year, as part of Steven's groupies.

It was ridiculously hot this year, to the point where I was standing in line for The Fold at not even 9:00 am, and I realized that it was just going to be too hot and I was not going to make it through the day. Unfortunately, that's come to be just part of life with a semi-chronic (according to the headache doctor) pain condition, and some of us were back at the hotel by 2:00 for a nap.

Fortunately, it did cool off enough for me to wear my completed Tappan Zee Cardigan to the after-party.

(Oof, I should have sucked my stomach in more!)

I got a terrific haul this year, and I'm so excited to cast on because Spring Cleaning is OVER! I finished four pairs of socks, a child's vest, and the Tappan Zee. It's so time to cast on like a crazed weasel again.

Ulmus

Technical difficulties -- meaning my camera and my laptop both basically chose the same time to give up the ghost -- have made me a bad blogger. But it's about time I recorded my Knitting Olympics Project. I wasn't going to do the Ravelympics: too complicated, too many rules, too many teams, etc. But when The Yarn Harlot posted that she was going back to the original Knitting Olympics, I was in, along with my teammates at Natural Stitches. 

The Knitting Olympics ask you to challenge yourself, trusting that you know what you can accomplish in 17 days. For this goal, I challenged myself to "get on with it already." I've loved Kirsten Kapur's Ulmus from the minute the pattern was released. I fantasized about what two colors of Malabrigo Sock I'd choose for my own Ulmus. I bought the pattern. I looked longingly at the other Ulmuses (Ulmii?) on Ravelry. But I could never bring myself to start. The Knitting Olympics seemed like the perfect kick in the pants.

I chose Malabrigo Sock in my all-time favorite Malabrigo colorway, Stonechat, and paired it with Turner, a green that goes from acid to muddy and back again.

Once I figured out how to count to three, the garter and slip-stitch body went fairly quickly.

The lace portion flew! I cast-off on Saturday, one day before the torch went out. Yvonne kindly blocked it for me, and here's a picture of the lace detail.

Here's my medal!

I'm rather amazed at how quickly the project came together. Perhaps these monogamous knitters are on to something? When you don't flit from project to project, you actually...finish. Go figure!

Snow Day!

You'd think snow days would be great for knitting, but I found myself so excited about the snow that I found it hard to settle down to knitting. We, unlike many others in the region, we fortunate that we had heat, power, and water. We had plenty to eat and nowhere to be (although the symphony, I have to say, took a shamefully long time to decide to cancel last night's concert). We had a Wii, good books, and Netflix. The worst thing that happened was that we lost our local HD channels, and that was remedied with a quick brush off of the dish once the snow stopped.

Once I did settle down, I worked on this, The Textured Shawl Recipe, in my new drug, Malabrigo Silky Merino. I find that two skeins can really take the edge off any craving to buy new yarn.

Here's another two-skein project using Malabrigo Silky Merino, Saroyan, by Liz Abinante:

And here's another one of Liz's free and most excellently-written patterns (seriously, I have paid for patterns that aren't anywhere near the quality of these free ones), the Traveling Woman Shawl. This one is knit in Dream in Color Smooshy in Gothic Rose; the deep, almost black red of the colorway is impossible to capture on film. Since my Shetland Triangle and Multnomah were WIPS on January 1, this is my first office entry for 10 Shawls in 2010.

Multnomah

Although yesterday's "Creative Time" was abbreviated due to massive piles of laundry, I did manage to block out my Multnomah Shawl. This doesn't count for the 10 Shawls in 2010 because I started it way back in September. It had been in time out because, in spite of it being the stitch pattern that new knitters cut their teeth on, I cannot manage to do Feather and Fan to save my life. Apparently, I cannot count to six with any kind of consistency.

The yarn is Creatively Dyed Tradewinds, a superwash fingering yarn in the Sour Orange colorway. I blocked it a little too severely, and the scallops look more like points; I've softened the edges somewhat since taking it off the blocking wires. Blocked, it looks like a Cylon Raider, doesn't it?

Shetland Triangle

Although these weren't on my original list of things to do to Expand My Fiber Comfort Zone in 2010, I think completing a lace shawl and blocking it myself certainly count as developing new skills. This is the Shetland Triangle I cast on for the Once in a Blue Moon Cast On in Socks that Rock Mediumweight, colorway Winter Solstice.

Unblocked:

On the blocking wires:

Finished!

"Creative Time"

A few weeks ago, I had the realization that my so-called "creative" energy was being directed at anything and everything except my own efforts. Wednesday mornings have become the precious time that I have alone in the house -- no work for me, husband at his work, The Preschooler at, well, preschool -- and so that has become my "creative time."

Have I been wildly creative? Well, no, but it's a time I can gather my thoughts and work on something that's just for me. Last week, I was inspired by the 10 Shawls in 2010 group on Ravelry and tagged, um, more than 10 shawls in my queue that I'd like to work on this year. While my choices don't exactly fit the perameter of the Ravelry group, it does give me a focus, and, more importantly, it helps me plan out projects for yarn I already have. Then I gathered up the patterns for those shawls and put them in one binder.

That was last week. This week I

• Knit one pattern repeat on my Shetland Triangle that I cast on for the Blue Moon Cast-On.
• Watched Hoarders.
• Jumped up after Hoarders was over and sorted out a bag of recyclables, lest I be on the show next.
• Walked to the library and back.
• Knitted another row on my shawl. 

Perhaps next week will be better.

Finish It Fall?

I had it in my head that I was going to work on the backlog of projects I'd let pile up over the summer. I had a bunch of projects that were close to completion when I flung them aside in favor of the sock contest. The shawls in particular cried out to be finished.

Springtime Bandit, in Malabrigo Silky Merino, waiting to be blocked, looking all manta-ray-ish.



I borrowed Yvonne's blocking tools: interlocking foam playmats like they use in daycares. Genius!




The completed shawl, hanging out on my neighbor's bushes (yes, they probably do think I am crazy).


And another shawl, The Simple Yet Effective Shawl using one ball of Noro Silk Garden Sock.


Great! I finished two projects! If only I hadn't cast on for three more this week...

I think I won

I think I won the staff portion of the Summer of Socks and Lace contest. Here are my entries from the second half of the summer.


Top left: No Purl Monkeys in Creatively Dyed Calypso.
Top right: Yarn Harlot's Plain Sock Recipe in Mini Mochi
Middle left: Completed "Don Draper Socks -- Kristen Kapur's Ampersand in Socks that Rock Mediumweight.
Middle right: Synesthesia Socks in Pagewood Farms Denali.
Bottom left: Completed Waving Lace Socks in Pagewood Farms Denali.
Botton right: More Circle Socks in Socks that Rock Lightweight.

Plus:


Slip Stitch Rib Anklets from More Sensational Knitted Socks in Socks that Rock Lightweight, July 2009 Rockin' Sock Club colorway.

Overall, I completed eleven pairs of socks and made a little progress on three more pairs (two of which are Cookie A patterns, hmmm). My total yardage, including the double scores for using Natural Stitches yarn, was somewhere in the 4000 range.

Proof positive

Yesterday I completed the oldest UFO I had active in my pile of projects, Embossed Leaves from Interweave Knits' Favorite Socks.


It started out as this in November 2007:



In many ways, this project, which had been ripped out twice before finally getting it right, represents my growing skills as a knitter over the past eighteen months. When I began it, I was new to socks -- look, for example, how the original is knit on double points, which I haven't used for at least a year -- and I was new to lace, as evidenced in my working copy, all covered with my chicken scratches keeping track of where I was in the pattern. The first time I started this, I lost track of where I was and messed up the foot. The second time, I realized my gauge was way too big.

The third time happened just a few weeks ago when I suddenly had some uninterrupted chunks of knitting time when I could concentrate on a chart. I cast on on smaller, 40 inch circulars, and to my surprise, the pattern just flew. I didn't need stitch markers, I didn't need to mark up my pattern, and in time, I didn't even need the chart. I've learned to read my knitting accurately, and more important, trust my own judgment. I don't think there's a more valuable skill in knitting than that.

And now to really make it complicated...

...I can't find matching ribbon for this bonnet. That's the problem with trying to be all fresh and modern instead of sticking to tried and true color combinations. Lisa and I looked at every single ribbon in Joann's and Pat Catans last night. (And is it just me who enters into this trance-like state when I enter the door of a Pat Catans? I suddenly get urges to make those plastic needlepoint kleenex box covers. Or to tie great big bows on baskets. Or to Bedazzle something. Last time I went to Pat Catans, I walked out with a jumbo-sized bag of jingle bells. I don't know why, but at the time it very much seemed like I needed those jingle bells.)

Anyway, this brown was the best I could do. I really wanted to match the teal, but since I have to take this gift in person in a few days, I can't do mail order. The perfectionist in me is really twitching on this one.

In other news:

• I'm working hard on some test knitting I hope to share with you soon and some way cute store samples.
• I got a hard-to-find copy of The Knitter - the newish UK knitting magazine for "advanced" knitters at Joann's last night.
• I am delusional enough to think I'll have something new knitted up to wear in three weeks at Maryland Sheep and Wool.
• And, to keep myself honest, I hereby declare that I am watching my weight.

Malabrigo March, reloaded

You didn't think I was going to let Malabrigo March pass by? Unlike last year, though, I am not casting on for any old thing (I mean, how many Calorimetries and neckwarmers does one need? Don't answer that.). I've picked three rather substantial projects using three different weights of Malabrigo yarns (so substantial, in fact, that I'm longing for a hat project).


Shalom Cardigan in Malabrigo Chunky in Applewood.



Ingenue, from Wendy Bernard's Custom Knits, in Merino Worsted. This was originally supposed to be my American Idol Selfish Knitting Sweater in Steadfast Wonderful Wool, but it just wasn't working out for me.

And finally, Ishbel in Malabrigo Sock, in the. most. perfect. red I've ever seen. Inspired by Franklin, I am going to make a lace shawl, at last.