Back in a little knitting slump

Fiber is taking a wee bit of a back seat to other stuff lately - mostly family stuff and an unexpected major house project. I can't really call it "home improvement" in the traditional sense, although preventing the corner of the house from sagging to the point of collapse does qualify as as a significant improvement. We spent the last two weekends of demolition of the screened porch and an attached greenhouse to get access to the supposedly load-bearing corner post that the previous owners damaged beyond function during their poorly conceived and executed installation of the greenhouse. Luckily we had my step-father's help with jacking up the corner of the house and pouring new concrete footings last week, and that corner of the house is nicely supported now while the concrete cures. Whenever we get into one of these projects undoing something stupid that the previous owners did, and this is far from the first time, I have to admire the strength built into this 1970s house; otherwise it wouldn't have survived their ownership. They did cover up their messes nicely though. No, I'm not feeling very charitable toward them. But anyway, we took this weekend off from home maintenance projects, other than my rearranging the guest room furniture. That helps clear my head - what can I say?!!?

On a fibery note, Tonni brought me some goodies back from her trip to SAFF! (Check out her pictures of the fun and fiber.) Two skeins of Mountain Colors Bearfoot - my absolute favorite sock yarn now, in lupine and teal - and the superwash merino pin roving on the upper left. She also generously gave me the ends of some of the rovings she spun up on her wheel. Those are the two on the right. The rovings are for learning to spin on the drop spindle. I bought the spindel at Maryland Sheep & Wool, but I stupidly didn't buy any learning fiber; everything I bought there is too pretty to mess up while I'm on the learning curve. So Tonni to the rescue! That girl is going to get me to spin!

I know, I'm already not getting much knitting done, my house is a wreck, and here I go, planning to add something new to the mix. It'll all work out... I do have Trampoline socks almost done, and the latest never-ending WIP, the top-down cardi, is progressing somewhat now that I got over myself and started blending in the new skeins. I still don't want to photograph it though. Gotta have at least one hang-up...

Sit, Sip & Knit

Pet peeve: yarn skeins that are carelessly tied and are therefore NIGHTMARISH to wind into a ball because some of the individual strands double back on themselves. And, no, this is not a case of careless placement onto the swift; I was oh so careful. Plan was to quickly wind this lovely harvest-y colorway of Schaefer Yarns "Anne" to take it with to the Sunday's meet-up with Tonni and Catherine so I could start a lace project (for a change) while around Tonni's lacy expertise, but there's no winding this yarn quickly. Grrr...



So I grabbed some sock yarn (Trampoline from Skacel) from the stash and cast on for some toe-ups (yawn). The yarn is aptly named though - lots of bounce in it.






But on a much happier note, Catherine's split poncho/ruana/wrap is complete and in the possesion of its owner. Doesn't she look just look chic? (This is her Paris Hilton over-the-shoulder look, by the way.) This became a collaborative project; Catherine crocheted the varigated side and about a quarter of the solid side, and I knitted the rest of the solid side and seamed them together. The design is from an old Design Source booklet for Manos del Uruguay, adjusted for the much smaller gauge of the Jojoland Melody (varigated) and Louet Gems (solid) yarn Catherine picked out.

Never say never...

At some point I swore I'd NEVER knit bouclé yarn into anything other than scarves, and then ONLY on double digit needles. Love how the yarn feels - hate how the yarn acts. Well, I had two skeins of Touch Exclusive bouclé yarn staring at me for weeks and weeks, and the thought of making two more "one skein wonder" mini-Clapotis just wasn't doing it for me. So then either a muse or an evil spirit put some size 13 circulars in my hands, and there I was, knitting away at a top down something. The final object depended on how far the yarn went. And this is what appeared (edited picture 15-Oct-08, colors are still a little off, not quite so pink in person):I thought the colors were unpromising together when I held the two skeins next to each other, but knit up they go quite well. The morning after I had started this, I found a fallen leaf from a maple tree with these same colors, so I took that as a sign - Mother Nature isn't wrong!

Nothing in this sweater is planned; it just happened. The technical specs, such as they are, for this are two skeins of Touch Exclusive Bouclé (approx. 185 yards each) and US 13 needles. Cast on 48 stitches (8 for each front, 8 for each shoulder, 16 for the back), knit a basic top-down raglan alternating colors whenever you feel like it until you run out of yarn.

The next challenge is to figure out how to finish it up. I have no yarn left at all, nothing to trim out the neckline, make a button band or other closure, etc. The edges need something though. Hmm...

Oh, and I also am puzzling over naming it. Some possibilities:

• "Carrie" (from the movie, because of the color, in honor of Halloween)
• something with "Maple" - "October Maple", "Maple Leaf" (because of the color inspiration)
• "Cherry Red" (from an old Lou Gramm song that kept rattling around in my brain while I worked on this "...it's either cherry red or midnight blue...")

End of an era

The day has come to say good-bye to some faithful companions. They've been in every kitchen since the time when "cooking" meant pouring milk over my cereal in the morning. Making them may even have been my first semi-fibery project, but thirty years later, I have to admit that my favorite potholders are done for.

So I dig out the potholder "loom" kit from the bottom of the craft closet this afternoon and make up some new ones. It was 'way more fun when I was 9 or 10, by the way. I don't remember the loops jumping off on their own volition, nor do I remember having a hard time finding loops that would actually stretch enough to fit the loom. Maybe those are all the things parents handle...

Anyway, I now have a new pair, all bright and shiny and unscathed. I've been afraid to wash the old ones for a few years now, they were getting that fragile. I figured they were getting heat sterilized with use anyway. (Germophobes, I really don't want to hear about it.)

Or am I perhaps carrying sentimentality just a wee bit too far?

Socks, socks and more socks

Here are the latest ones:
From left to right, they are Waving Lace Socks (Mountain Colors Bearfoot in Rosehip) and Diagonal Cross-Rib Socks (Dream In Color Smooshy in Blue Lagoon), both from Interweave's "Favorite Socks", and then some basic 2x2 ribbed socks (Regia Jacquard Color in a denim-y colorway).















They all are part of last month trip to Farm Country to help out during my mother's post-surgical recovery. The Bearfoot socks were intended as my sanity project; I brought the last treasured skein of this, my favorite, sock yarn specifically for that. I had no idea what to expect, so naturally I expected the worst. Happily, things went well with her recovery. The Smooshy socks are from my foray to the LYS (such a friendly place!) near the physical therapist's. The self-stripers I made for my step dad for the rare occasion when he wears socks - he's a barefoot and Chaco sandals kind of guy.

Pleased as I am with the results - come on, how can one not be pleased with having more handknit socks?!!? - I'm getting a bit antsy with just doing small projects. In the last few months it's been almost all small stuff: socks, scarves and hats for a friend's shop, coffee cup cozies for a Breast Cancer Awareness Month fundraiser (I forgot to photograph them before I dropped them off - doh!).

I did make one sleeveless sweater on commission, but I don't count that as "mine". The pattern, color and yarn choices were all someone else's; my participation was merely in the execution of someone else's ideas. Don't get me wrong; I have nothing against commissions. They just don't particularly scratch the creative itch.

I do have a top-down cardi parked on the needles for about two months now. I had this lovely lovely yarn in the stash (picked up on super sale a few years ago), and I made it into an assymetrical cardi first. HATED the end result, so rippity-rip, and started over. This one is based on a Marianne Isager design in her book "Stricken a la carte". I bought the book in Germany last summer; I don't think it's available in English yet. I suspected from the beginning that I might not have enough yarn, and I was right. Getting more wasn't a problem, other than the obvious one of the new yarn not matching the old. I know what I need to do - rip back a ways and alternate rows of old and new skeins - I just haven't been able to grit my teeth and go to it. It's bugged me so much that I don't even want to photograph the thing as a WIP until I get over that particular hump.

Not (quite) a dead blog and some general weirdness

Skipping over the details of the last few months is probably for the best; a quick summary should do.

After getting back from beach vacation in late spring, things got weird at Egg's work (precursor to all the recent economic/financial weirdness lately perhaps?). A month later I went back south because my snowbird mother was borderline incapacitated with lower back/hip/knee pain, and they needed help getting the things squared away for hurricane season and getting the sailboat back to FL. We dodged squalls all the way back and got pasted by a few really wicked ones, but in between I did manage a little sock knitting. The picture looks idyllic, but there was some weird juju out there the entire trip.

Home for July and most of August, then up the interstate to Farm Country for a month to take care of my mother following her hip replacement surgery. A bum hip had been causing all that pain, and the change post-surgery was nothing short of amazing.

Doggie got a farm vacation. Things that suburban dogs don't normally get to do, like digging,

rolling in (deer? muskrat? groundhog?) poop,

and interacting with big critters.

For entertainment I went to a few farm auctions, and I found treasure! That is, I'm sure this "thingy" (actually there are two of them) is something wonderful, once I figure out just what this weird contraption is.





















The auction bill said "antique yarn winder", but that doesn't seem right somehow. The Amish neighbors all had no idea, and even when one of them took me and my mystery object to visit a couple 90-something year old elders a little further away, no luck either. The consensus was that it looked very interesting, and they'd love to know what it finally turns out to be, whenever I do find out. The mystery continues for now...

Blog slacker still on island time (vacation report #1)

Here are a few excuses why I've not updated in almost a month:

• internet connectivity on vacation was spotty at best
• vacation photos require much editing of unhappy angles (meaning pasty white chubbiness)
• the dog required much attention and love after being abandoned at the gulag (boarding kennel) while Egg and I frolicked on the beach
• I went to Maryland Sheep & Wool three days after we got back from our island escape and am still recovering from fiber overload
• I've been in an extended post-vacation slump

So, time to get caught up! Let's start with ten days of salt water infused bliss...

We flew in and out of Daytona Beach using a small flight service that goes straight to the island, bypassing Nassau completely. I'm not a mega-resort and casino/nightclub action kind of girl, and the idea of being stuck on a cruise ship with multiple thousands of people is about as close to Hell as I can imagine, so that suits me just fine. Also great is skipping most of the post-9/11 air travel unpleasantries.

Our original plan was to go sailing with my step-dad, but a combination of his building timetable slipping a bit behind and a rash of scary brushfires in the area made us change plans. It just didn't seem like a good idea to leave their home site unattended for days on end.

We rented a place in Little Harbour, up the way from where my folks are building in Casuarina Point. As the seagull flies, it's only a couple miles; by road it's about 12 or so. Island geography is funny that way. We quickly got into vacation mode. (And dig that farmer's tan/sunburn thing on my arm!)

With generous coating of SPF45 I got back in touch with my salt water self. (BTW, when the label on the sunscreen says "May stain some fabrics", believe it. A couple T-shirts look like they have carrot juice spills in awkward places.) Mother Ocean was a little testy with me at first for having neglected her for the past three years, but she relented fairly quickly. My beach crawls were rewarded with lots of small treasures - beach glass is magic - and in the water I had small finny escorts. After one beach nap I woke up to see a ghost crab eying me as if weighing whether I was dead and worth a nibble; he moved on. Egg preferred a more sedentary and shady approach to relaxing, understandable with his burn-not-tan skin that no SPF can completely protect.

Partly because of the wild fires, partly because that's just the way it is down there, phone service was unreliable while we were there. For quick and easy communication with my folks down the way, we used the VHF radio (kinda like CB radio for boaters), and my call sign was "Wayward Daughter". Egg came up with it, and I thought it was perfect. Since the radio channels are open, there were probably a few boaters wondering where the hell this oddly named boat was.