Toddler knitting conversation

In between Trick-or-Treaters, I knitted a hat and supervised The Toddler's dinner. He noticed the hat and asked "Henry knit?"

Me: Yes, when you are a bigger boy, you can knit.

H: Henry knit!

Me: What will you knit?

H: Red yarn

Me: But what will you knit with the red yarn?

H: Red. Red Choo-Choos! Henry's yarn.

I leave you with The Reluctant Yoda. Happy Halloween!

Autumnal

I think I’ve been frogging more than knitting, so I don’t have much to share these days. I had a moment with myself and got real about my knitting basket and the number of WIPs in it. I ripped a few things that I had to admit weren’t going to be finished any time soon, including the lace ribbon scarf I agonized over the yarn choice at the beginning of the summer. Then I re-took my own measurements since my weight has been yo-yoing up and down this year and ripped out all, yes ALL, of my sweaters in progress to be reknit at my current size.

I do have one completed project to share, Jared Flood’s Turn-a-Square hat:

I have matching Turn-A-Square Elizabeth Zimmermann mitered mittens in progress, or at least I did until I realized this morning that I mixed up the order of the decreases.

It’s finally turned crisp and autumnal and I feel like knitting beautiful fall items. On a whim, I whipped out this Halloween-y Mitered Hanging Towel from the new Mason-Dixon book. It’s, uh, supposed to look like candy corn

.

I also have to start a baby gift for a dear friend who is having a girl next month. When I asked her if I could use non-superwash wool, she replied “I’m Polish. We launder well.” That’s music to a knitter’s ears.

This morning, The Toddler looked over at me as I ripped the mittens and said “Mama yarning!” Yarning indeed!

Meeting Jared Flood

On Friday, I took a Top-Down class with Jared Flood at Yarns Unlimited. Honestly, I didn't want to go and be all swoon-y and stalker fan-like, but I came home a bigger fan than ever. The beauty and simplicity of his photography shines through in his personality. He's actually kind of shy and nonassuming in a very charming way. I knew he was about 25 years old but I didn't know he'd been knitting seriously for only 4 or 5 years.

He was a patient and kind teacher. We learned two new cast-ons and he came around the class and helped people individually (HE TOUCHED MY HAND, OMG). His taste is impeccable. He passed around a sweater he'd done, a simple V-neck, rolled hem raglan, and it was gorgeous. The class was officially "knitting from the top down," but toward the end, people asked such good questions that it turned into a lovely lecture on seamless knitting as a whole. Everything was firmly grounded in Barbara Walker and Elizabeth Zimmerman, but he knew contemporary designers and offered a lot of information on how to adapt patterns.

Overall, it was lovely. I knew the Walker and Zimmerman stuff in theory but it was incredibly inspirational to see someone who clearly had a passion for that kind of knitting explain and demonstrate it.

Knitters for Obama

Join here!

The "books" part

It’s with a mixture of sadness and exhilaration that I write that the formal “books” part of my books, cats, yarn life has come to an end. At the risk of sounding trite, after a lot of soul-searching, I came to the decision to withdraw from my Ph.D. program. I am grateful for every single class I took, the exceptional lifelong friends I made, the amazing professors who taught me, and the joy of discovering my dissertation project (a subject that I will always love), but in the end, I do not think I am suited to follow an academic path. It’s exciting and scary at the same time to be at this point in my life, but I look forward to seeing what’s next.

Books will always be a great love, particularly now that I can read for pleasure without guilt! As for the yarn part, I’m increasing my hours at the store. I’ll be there most Tuesday afternoons, Friday during the day, and Saturday, with some other days sprinkled in there as needed. It’s a time of transition, and I have to admit, as much as I know that this is the right decision for me and my family, it is closing the door on something that used to be very important to me.

Dare I try this again?

Since, you know, last year went so well.

Say Cheese!

I have three somewhat substantial blog subjects floating around in my head, but for now, I'll condense them into three brief talking points. (Have I been watching too much cable news this election season? I just used talking points in a sentence.)

1. I finished the Big Boy version of the Super Natural Stripes sweater for The Toddler. He learned from Elmo's World that the thing to do when you see a camera is to say "CHEESE," so that's the only pose I can get him in these days. The yarn is Blue Sky Alpaca Organic and Dyed Cotton.


2. Here we go again with the MDK Crack. I am still very, very, very bitter that the moths got, of all things, my huge stash of dishcloth cotton, but I managed to salvage some of it. I'm feeling my loss in a big way, though, now that the new Mason-Dixon Knitting book is out, but I was able to come up with this. Miters and dishcloth cotton all in the same project! Woohoo!


3. I Tim Gunned my knitting basket. Did a lot of ripping and frogging. Looks like I'll be reknitting a lot of my sweater projects in a smaller size.

I love my cats, but.....

....not when an unnamed cat throws up all over my Rockin' Sock Club binder! After getting up with The Toddler who woke up early due to a leaky diaper, I came downstairs to find the puke mess. Lesson #1: Don't leave your RSC binder where a cat can get to it. Lesson #2: Be thankful that the binder wipes off easily.

It's 8:00 AM on a Sunday morning. Can I get a do-over?

Can you O.D. on Socks that Rock?

Warning: Rockin' Sock Club SPOILER AHEAD!


I've been running around like Cornholio all morning because I received not one but two packages from Blue Moon Fiber Arts.



No, this isn't all mine! After sorting out what Lisa and Michelle ordered, I was left with this.


The Lightweight: Gingerbread Dude, Flower Power, KawKaw, Downpour, Jubilation, and Oma Desala


The Mediumweight: Treehugger, Oregon Clover Honey (which I don't even remember ordering, so my subconscious must have clicked the button), Rook-y, and Rauen.


The September Rockin' Sock Club: Tide Pooling!

It's all I can do not to cast on for anything new, but I'm making myself finish up at least three WIPs first!

More Go Get Your Jacket

Me again, this time on the beloved February Lady Sweater. I guess I should, uh, finish mine already.

I loves the green

I was kitchnering up (is that a word) my Spring Forwards in Smooshy in the Happy Forest colorway and realized I have an awful lot of green sock yarn.





And yet somehow, when I shop, I seem to forget that I have all this green sock yarn at home and immediately pick up the green again. Really, who has this many green socks? Anyone else have a strange fascination with a colorway that you'd never wear in a store-bought sock?

I forgot to say

I have a drive-by posting on Go Get Your Jacket on "political crochet."

I can haz Ravelry bag?

It's official. I am a knitting bag whore. I've been waiting for months to be at the right place at the right time to score a Ravelry Knitting bag (to the point where Lisabee and I were stalking Very Important Founders of Ravelry last May at Md Sheep and Wool to find out how to get them) and mine finally arrived this morning.

This makes

• one prized Jordana Paige bag
• one floral bag purchased at Handmade Arcade last year
• one huge Md Sheep and Wool bag
• one bag from the old Pittsburgh Knit and Bead
• one sock monkey bag from the Chewy Spaghetti Blue Plate Special Club
  
• one plain old tote from Target that was supposed to be The Toddler's beach bag

And despite those seven bags, I still coveted and desired a customer's beautiful Namaste bag at the store last week. I need help.

Mama's work? Yarn? Buy it?

In other words, The Toddler is explaining that he went to Natural Stitches to choose the yarn for his Tomten jacket. The Toddler is still a fan of The Opinionated Knitter, and keeps leafing through it, chanting "red sweater? red sweater?" So I had my husband bring him in at the end of my shift yesterday so he could see all the reds for himself.

I told him he could choose his red yarn, and he replied "Hmmm," putting his finger to his lips and looking carefully at the yarn. He pointed out various cottons, saying "This is coot [cute]. This is a red one. This is a purple one." I don't know where he got the cute remark; I'm thinking he's been shopping with my sister. But for those of you looking for educational opportunities for your small children, a yarn store is a great place to talk about colors.

His choice, after a consultation with the staff of Natural Stitches and one black bunny visiting for the afternoon, is Cascade 220 Superwash Handpaints in the "cherry pie" colorway, a vibrant mix of reds. I think it will be a lot of fun to knit up as I tackle another Elizabeth Zimmermann pattern.

Top-Down Tuesday

I put the finishing touches on three children's gifts last week, all knit from the top-down. I am loving making garments this way, and I think it will be rare if I ever make a sweater from the bottom up with seams ever again, with so many great alternative construction methods out there.

Girlfriend's Swing Coat Sweater, made for a new (well, not so new now) big sister in Cascade Sierra, a cotton/wool blend. Cute, cute, cute. I want a grown-up version for me.

This Super-Natural Stripes was knit for her baby brother in three shades of Blue Sky Alpaca Organic Cotton, which is my absolute new favorite cotton to knit with.


And finally, this Mossy Jacket for Miss Corinne, made with Malabrigo Merino Worsted.


The last two patterns come from f.pea's free pattern fridays, and while I don't want to diss the patterns because they are so cute and I am thrilled with the final result, I do want to give a heads up to newer knitters. Remember: free blog patterns haven't always been test-knitted to the extent that patterns for sale are (or at least should be) and there might be typos in the stitch counts, or instructions may not be as clear as you'd like them to be. I ran across a few glitches in these two patterns, but because I understood top-down construction, they weren't a problem for me.

I had a pretty relaxing holiday weekend full of knitting. I worked Saturday and Monday at the store, and learned an important lesson: don't rearrange and fluff the pretty alpaca roving when you're wearing black pants! Sunday I got together with a few of my knitting peeps, where I learned another valuable lesson: don't drink too much coffee when casting on for a top down sweater or you might forget to mark for something important, oh say, a shoulder. Since The Toddler is not a World War I veteran, I had to frog the whole thing and start over so he'd have two good arms in his new sweater. Hope everyone else had a nice weekend!

Tomten?

Is anyone -- particularly the moms of The Toddler's real life toddler peeps -- interested in doing a Tomten Jacket KAL? Since The Toddler asked for a "wed one" [ahem, red] after perusing Elizabeth Zimmermann's The Opinionated Knitter, I've been studying the pattern and thinking of yarn possibilities. I don't have enough thick red worsted in my stash but at work today, I considered:

this Merino 5 Print



or this Cascade 220 Superwash Paint


My other idea is to wait until the new shipment of Dream in Color Classy comes in and hope for some Lipstick Lava (and hope that the batch we get doesn't look this pink).


Thoughts? Anyone else in?

I must be doing something right

I sat down last night to start a Baby Surprise Jacket for Levi, and to my great surprise and delight, The Toddler abandoned Go Dog, Go, and The Little Engine That Could and became enthralled with Elizabeth Zimmermann's The Opinionated Knitter. He loved it! He pointed out all the babies and the mamas and the dadas and the grandmas. He talked about all the colors of the sweaters in the pictures. He asked for a red sweater after seeing the Tomten jackets, so I guess I have to find some red yarn. I had to pry him away from the book so he could take a bath. I'm just tickled to death that he enjoyed it so much.

I'm whipping through some socks and finishing up some baby gifts this week. Just a reminder, if you have entered the Summer of Socks and Lace contests at Natural Stitches, the deadline to bring your projects to the store to be weighed and entered is this Monday, Labor Day. I'll be there Saturday and Monday, and I'm looking forward to seeing all the entries.

Picking myself back up

I'm not part of the Ravelry Olympics, but I cast on for these Spring Forward socks on Friday night as I watched the opening ceremonies of the 2008 games. The yarn is the July selection of the Rockin' Sock Club -- these are really not my colors, but I'm enjoying the yarn and making peace with the blue spiral pooling, which seems is what the yarn wants to do. It's a fast, fast knit and the lace is easy to memorize and read as you go.

As for my online silence, well, all I can say is that it was so much worse after all. We've been battling moths of all kinds for weeks, and I've lost a lot of finished objects and some stash. The upside is that it's really, really made me reconsider my yarn buying habits (yes, again) and I realized that I need to enjoy what I have. Yet I wouldn't wish this on my worst knitting nemesis, if I had a knitting nemesis, that is. Wish us luck in getting rid of this problem for good. I'm already on a first name basis with half the employees of Terminex already!

Bibs

Hey, more about Mason-Dixon Crack, I mean, baby bibs, in today's Go Get Your Jacket.

It could have been soooo much worse, I guess

We had a bug infestation in our rice recently (lesson learned: those big bags of rice Costco aren't such a good deal after all; better to buy small quantities and keep them stored in glass containers). So that made me a teensy bit paranoid about my stash, and I decided to take a look yesterday.

It's a good thing I did. No, my stash hasn't been eaten through entirely, but I was forced to confront The Shame of My Stash. See, long ago, before my wedding even, I bought a very expensive Colinette AbFab Throw kit at the height of their popularity. If you remember those, you remember how expensive they were. Anyway, I bought it and then abandoned the project about six inches into it. I know, I know. I never even entered it into my Ravelry Stash or Project page. I just stuffed it in its original plastic bag in the bottom of my cupboard and pretended it didn't exist. Guess which plastic bag had a hole in it? Guess which project had the tell-tale signs of, gulp, moths, on one of the skeins of yarn?

To my credit, I didn't freak out. I brushed off the visible moth....stuff outside, put the offending project in a new plastic bag, sealed it, and put it in Time Out in the deep freezer in the basement. The rest of my stash appears to be unharmed. I vacuumed the living daylights out of the stash cupboard, put in a ton of cedar blocks, and made sure everything was securely packaged in ziplocks. The sweater quantities are okay. The Precious Sock Yarns are tightly wrapped and then stored in plastic boxes with snap-on lids. I think it will all be all right. I hope.