kmkat and her kneedles

Randomness: painfully convoluted sentences, John Mayer, ponderous thoughts, and even a little knitting.

To make amends for my little rant yesterday -- oh, and btw, thanks for all the bah-humbuggery appreciation y'all sent me, did my little heart good to know that humor still rules the world (I wish! It could do a better job than certain White (And Other-Colored) Men are doing at present, but that is a rant for another day) -- and did you see that Wendy commented (be still my heart, a celebrity comment! wOOt! (and did you read when Norma (yay! Norma!) blogged that "wOOt" is Webster's Word of the Year, except that they spelled it wrong, all the Kool Kids know it's spelled "w00t," not "wOOt") Thanks, Wendy!) -- I'm putting up this little YouTube number:*

Highlights to watch for:

• The sweet knit hat -- intarsia? stranded? -- worn by one of the graffiti artists. Yeah, I later realized it is really a ski mask, but still, it is an objet d'knit, and we all loves us some objets d'knit, doncha know?
• The awesomely perfect circles! drawn freehand! by that same artist;
• The skyline of NYC looking like something is missing, and we all know what that is, and it saddens us.

That album -- or "alblum," as my dear MIL used to pronounce it, and so did my husband, who argued with me for an amazingly long time that "alblum" was a perfectly valid alternative to "album" and whom I only convinced otherwise when I dragged him, alblumming all the way, to the dictionary -- came to live in my iTunes a week or two ago and I have been listening to it and smearing the music and lyrics all over myself, it is so good.

[ascends soapbox] As much as I love that song, I keep disagreeing with the underlying sentiment, that his generation is waiting on the world to change. The counter-culturalists of the 1960s and 1970s didn't wait. They stormed the bastions of convention helter-skelter and willy-nilly and Nelly-bar-the-door, and nowadays many of those counter-cultural values are mainstream, although sadly not so much universally practiced as universally proclaimed: ecological awareness, recycling, organic food production, planet-friendly practices, multiculturalism, tolerance, diversity, social justice. One cannot simply wait for the world to change into something that better suits one; one must be the change one wishes to see™. [/descends from soapbox]

On the other hand, the sentiments in "Belief" seem to me to express a profound truth that the world would do well to grasp:

But, hey, I'm not all about the lyrics. Listening to his pre-song comments in this video of "I'm Gonna Find Another You" I realized that, Doh, of course I like that song, it's... blues.

* * * * *

Now, as promised, a little knitting.

My first preemie hat for Jeanne:

Go on, knit her a couple. Quick, easy, stash-busters. You know you want to. Deadline is January 15.

Yarn: Lion Brand Cotton Ease (50% cotton/50% acrylic); Lake, Lime, and Berry.
Needles: US#6
Pattern: Basic hat from Ann Budd's A Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns, preemie size.

I was a bit unhappy with the size and shape it turned out to be, thinking that it was too wide for its depth, but an emergency e-mail to Jeanne and I was tactfully informed that 1, babies come in all sizes and shapes (well, within limits), and b, even preemie babies grow and often continue to need little hats. Babies grow? Who knew?

The uneven stitches smoothed out nicely after a quick run through the washer and dryer with the other laundry.

Yesterday's knitting scene:

In the interests of full disclosure, I must tell you that the New York Public Library mug does not contain coffee, nor even Sleepy Rabbit tea, as it did yesterday. Nope, that is Worcestershire sauce-tinted tap water, concocted to re-create the scene more accurately. Do I have mad food stylist skillz or what?

To remove the taste of the forgoing awfulness, please fondle the virtual cuddliness of the knitting:

#2 son asked me to knit him a pair of socks. Listen! Hear that? Hell freezes over.

He has steadfastly refused any and all of my offers to for him. He's a fashionista in his own way, that boy, and his self-image brooks no mother-produced garments. Oh, except for that Dulaan-destined hat he swiped from me last winter. And that glow-in-the-dark scarf I so laboriously knitted him last year at his request and which he wore about twice. Grrrrr.

But I am A Knitting Mother -- ya know, the ones who want to wrap the world in hand knits? So I immediately agreed to make him a pair of socks.

No wool, he said, Wool is itchy.

Okay, no problem, I said, and showed him a recently-received color card of Knit Picks Shine Worsted (60% Pima cotton/40% Modal®). He picked out the terra cotta and cream shown above. One reason I was able to agree so readily was that I had discovered the extreme speediness with which worsted weight yarn knits up into socks. Wham! Bam! Socks!

He sent me a link to these socks to show how he wanted his to look.

Don't guys have silly-looking legs? Why do they pose like that, so their legs look even sillier than necessary? Why do I care?

* Diagram that (so-called) sentence!

Addicted.

I have become addicted to the striped Noro scarf, as you can clearly see above. The one at the left has been seen here before; it is for the Red Scarf Project and was actually knit from Plymouth Boku. The other two are the real thing, both knit from Noro Silk Garden and both intended as Christmas presents. I also have 4 more skeins of Boku lying lightly in my stash, intended for a scarf similar to the first one but with a bit more red, and intended for myself [insert selfish giggle].

I cannot describe in words how much fun it is to make these scarves, to watch the different colors come out of the ball and onto the needle, to see what color falls next to another, to see how they contrast and complement each other. It is sheer magic. I have decided that Noro SG is okay with me. Irregularities in the yarn are were previously annoying are now charming; now it is reminiscent of handspun rather than incompetence. In fact, when I was working on the rightmost scarf above in the car on the yarn crawl a couple weeks ago, every one of the Fiber Guild spinners asked me independently if the yarn were handspun. I just wish the [significantly cheaper] Boku came in as many color variations as the Noro.

QuasiPseudoNeoNoro:

Multicolored Noro scarf:
Yarn: Noro Silk Garden, most of 2 skeins each of colors 204 and 249, bought on eBay.
Needles: Knit Picks Options US#7.
Pattern: Cast on 39 st. 1x1 ribbing. Slip 1 purlwise wyif at beginning of each row. Edited to add: Work 2 rows from one color, then 2 rows from the second color. Repeat until scarf is long enough or you run out of yarn.

Natural/brown/gray Noro scarf:
Yarn: Noro Silk Garden, most of 2 skeins each of colors 267 and 269.

* * * * *

Big changes happening here:

I'm going back to work at the accounting firm for a few weeks to help in the pre-October 15th mini-busy season. (October 15th is the date that individual returns that were extended last April are due, plus the last date that 2003 amended returns can be filed.) So I will be back in Minneapolis, hanging out with my orange cat Tabby, and coming back here to the lake on weekends. It's all good: I like the work, I like the people, and the extra paycheck means Smokey can let up a little at his job and be able to work on the projects he wants to finish up before winter.

Matthew got a callback for an internship at a video post production company in Minneapolis. I was able to help him get his foot in the door because my cousin runs the company, but they use interns regularly, plus he has spent time there before and they know his work. He will probably work there for most of the next year.

I don't remember if I have talked about his plans before. He graduated from high school last spring. He wants to go into graphic design and advertising, and his educational plan is to attend the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. But although he is very bright, he is not a scholar, and he didn't want to move directly from high school to college -- he wanted a year off from the pressure of assignments and homework. So this internship/job is exactly what he wanted and needed. He will live in the basement of our Minneapolis house.

We both start Monday morning. We are all smiling. Life is good.

Dancing on the deck.

Behold.

I started these in May and finished the knitting a couple months ago. It was way too hot to wear them, though, so they sat for weeks and weeks, waiting to have their ends woven in. Now it is cold enough to wear them. Thankfully.

This was my first project from Koigu. Now I knew what all the fuss was about. Squishy squooshy yum.

I like how the colors made tidy stripes on the feet. On the legs the stripes are more swimmy, if you know what I mean. Not entirely circling the leg but instead spiraling one way for a bit, then reversing on themselves and flowing the other way for awhile.

But how best to model them? Hmmmmm...

First.

Second. My legs are not long enough to capture both feet at the same time, sorry.

Third. Boy, that was piss-poor. These things get a lot harder with age.

Fourth. Ah, that's easier. Whew.

Fifth. You call that fifth? This is fifth:

Don't quit your day job, kat :)

A little light knitting.

Eight facecloths for Rabbitch's project. The two light-colored hearts (vertical garter ridges) are a pattern from Ann and the blue/multi one (horizontal ridges) is my own design. Yeah, hers is better :)

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... knitting!

My contributions to Norma's Red Scarf Project. From the left:

QuasiPseudoNeoNoro (say it, it's fun!)
Yarn: Plymouth Boku (95% wool, 5% nylon; 99 yds/skein), 2 skeins each of colors 6 and 11. This yarn is clearly a copy of Noro Silk Garden, minus the VM and some of the silk; it is also about $6/skein vs. $8/skein for the Noro :) It made a good substitute in my mind. The scarf is lightweight but squishy and warm. I was afraid it might be too scratchy to be comfortable, but it isn't. I wet-blocked it using Eucalan in the soak water which probably helped.
Pattern: Just like the Noro scarf. 1x1 ribbing, slip the first stitch of each row purlwise, alternate skeins every 2 rows. Knitting this was positively addictive; I wanted to know how the colors would play out. I kept thinking I would need to break the yarn and take out lengths that didn't contrast enough, but that proved not to be necessary. Even when the colors of the two skeins were very close, the subtle differences still created discernible stripes.
Needles: KnitPicks Options, US#7.

Chocolate-covered Cherries
Yarn: A hodgepodge. The purpley red is the leftover alpaca from the scarf on the right, plus another skein of KnitPicks Andean Silk in the Sangria colorway (which turned out to be exactly the same shade as the leftover alpaca, but solid with a slight silky gleam instead of woolly and a bit heathery). The brown is 85 yards of Skacel Adagio (70% baby llama, 30% silk; 110ys/50gr per skein). The ivory is Rowan Kid Classic (70% lambswool/26% kid mohair/4% nylon), color 828; I still have most of the 153yd/50gr skein left. This scarf is meltingly soft.
Pattern: Garter stitch, knit lengthwise. Cast on 270 st, leaving a tail of the approximate length that you want the fringe to be. Break yarn, ditto. Knit every row, leaving the fringe-length tail at beginning and end of every row. Change colors as it suits you. Bind-off with Elizabeth Zimmerman's sewn cast off. I made the brown stripes 3 rows wide so as to have a garter ridge on each side and to eliminate any possibility of the scarf having a wrong or right side. The white stripes are just one row. The purpley-red ones are at least three rows. The scarf isn't quite finished; I need to neaten up the ends and trim the fringe. Mañana.
Needles: KnitPicks Options, US#7.

Ribbed and Striped Alpaca
Yarn: Filatura Lanarota Puno (100% alpaca, 100 yds/50gr), colorway 1526, most of three balls. I bought this yarn last year at Smiley's Yarns internet sale ($2.99/skein), intending it for the RSP, but a proper scarf really would have required another ball; I didn't figure that out soon enough. So the yarn sat -- and sat -- until I bought some other yarn for the stripes: KnitPicks Andean Silk (55% superfine alpaca, 23% silk, 22% merino wool; 96yds/50gr per skein), one ball each of Navy and Hyacinth, plus a bit from a second ball of Hyacinth. This scarf is also sinfully cuddly.
Pattern: Standard scarf, 2x2 rib; slip the first stitch of each row purlwise. Narrower stripes are 4 rows each; wider ones are... wider.
Needles: KnitPicks Options, US#7.

The Orphan Foundation folks say they want unisex scarves so I tried to make these as non-gender-specific as possible. I may have succeeded a bit too well -- the one on the left is definitely masculine. I'm pretty sure the OFA folks will have no problem with that.

Now to gather some other goodies to go into the packages with them. Starbucks cards and chocolate, natch. The hodgepodge scarf reminds me of chocolate-covered cherries, but those are difficult to find in local stores. I shall persevere, though. Matching the chocolate to the scarf is key.

County fair.

I went to the county fair today.

The weather was perfect.

My shift starts at 10. Better hurry. Hmmm. Looks like I need to reset the date.

Not many people here yet.

Our booth was in the Horticulture Building. Of course. Where else?

Outside the building was an impromptu Lost & Found.

Our booth was between AA and a lady selling Tupperware.

Prices are dropping.

I took enough pictures to keep this blog going all week. Y'all are gonna get to see everything I saw. You excited yet? I am.

I do knit. Really.

Yes, folks, I have been knitting.

I have been making stuff to sell at the Friends of the Polk County Libraries booth at the county fair, which starts on Thursday. The Friends are raising money to buy an LCD projector to be shared by the ten municipal libraries.

These are facecloths, $5 each. Any that don't sell, plus any more that I make between now and September, will go to Rabbitch's project (scroll down to the July 8 entry to read about it). Many thanks to Ann for the heart pattern -- isn't it sweet? I wish I had time to knit a bunch more of these. I know they would sell.

Remember all this?

   

I got at least one ball of every color that *my* Wal*Mart doesn't sell. That's a lot, people.

I made some warshcloths*. $5 each.

 

I made some bibs. $8 each. Actually, these are less work than the warshcloths, but I figured people would pay more for a cute bib than a cute warshcloth.

Many thanks to Ann 'n' Kay for giving me their blessing to make a nonprofit *profit* using their patterns.

We are selling other stuff, too.

Felted mittens, $10, and kits, $7, to make more felted mittens.

Library t-shirts and aprons and baby onesies.

We planned to make many more of these purses -- Goodwill sweaters, felted, cut up, lined, with felted I-cord handles -- but they turned out to take more time than we expected. We have another sale in November; by then we will have more purses ($25 and up). These two are pretty plain. We got fancier as we went. Too bad the fancy ones only got cut out, not sewn. (Guess who was in charge of the sewing? Given the choice I would rather knit than sew, plus there is nowhere to plug in the machine in the car.)

Library tote bags. Aprons, long and short. All emblazoned with "Check it out @ your library." Notecards, too.

Of course we are selling books as well, but they are a LOT of work to pack up and transport and set up and pack up afterwards and bring back. Every year we take fewer of them.

 

Hooray for the fair! and hooray for knitters!

* Warshcloth knitters may notice that the slipped stitches on a couple of these are lined up in columns rather than offset as the pattern puts them. I had been making them that way for months before I noticed that my warshcloths were... different than everyone else's. Clearly pattern-reading is not my strongest suit.

Doo-laan, Doo-laan, Doo-laan!

(sung to the tune of "He's So Fine," with apologies to The Chiffons and to the spirit of Ronnie Mack, who wrote the song)

They're so fine (Doo-laan Doo-laan Doo-laan)
Wish they were mine (Doo-laan Doo-laan Doo-laan)
Those beautiful kids over there (Doo-laan Doo-laan Doo-laan)
The ones with the coal-black hair (Doo-laan Doo-laan Doo-laan)

My last two Dulaan sweaters are done. The random sweater:

and the sherbet one.

I knitted this one during tax season but didn't sew it together until Saturday. Isn't it just the cutest thing you ever saw? (No false modesty around here. No modesty of any kind, really.) The neck is not actually wonky; I just didn't smooth it out before the photo.

Here's what went into the box. Don't those sweaters look jolly in their chorus line pose?

I sent off the box of winter boots last month. I hope. I can't find it in the house, so I guess I already sent it.

Details, if you are interested:

Random sweater.

Yarn: Bernat Lana 100% merino worsted, two strands held together throughout. I had two skeins (198m/217yd; 100g/3.5oz each) of each color -- black, dark brown, camel, and white -- and used a bit over half.

Needles: KnitPicks Options US10.5

Pattern: Child's raglan from A Handy Book of Sweater Patterns by Ann Budd. I used the 34" pattern but it ended up to be 30". No, I didn't swatch. I described the stripe pattern ad nauseum  here.

Mods: I used a different double decrease for the raglans. Slip 2 tog knitwise; knit 1, pass 2 slipped stitches over. It makes a line of slipped stitches up the raglan and no visible decreases. It also camouflaged the color changes that occurred immediately after the slipped stitches. And I realized after 2-3" of yoke that, at my row gauge, the yoke was gonna be w-a-y too tall, so I decreased every round instead of every other. It seemed to work; the sweater looks more or less proportional.

Sherbet sweater.

Yarn: Tahki Yarns Dazzle, 100% wool, self-striping, bought on eBay last summer. I had five balls, each 100m/108yd/50gr, and I have about enough left to make a nice little cat toy.

Needles: Denise Interchangables US9; 4st/in. I DID swatch for this one. The yarn label said US10.5 needles, 3st/in, and I didn't think that looked right. I much prefer the fabric I got on the smaller needles.

Pattern: Child's drop shoulder sweater from A Handy Book of Sweater Patterns by Ann Budd, size 26", which looks to be about a size 4.

Mods: none. I spit-spliced the yarn to maintain the striping pattern, and I matched the stripes on the front and back, plus the sleeves match each other.

* * * * *
Shortly after the photo shoot the deck looked like this.

 

That is a jar of so-called sun tea on the table. Ah, what is so fine as a day in June?

Random Sunday

Yeah, I know, it's supposedly to be random Wednesday. I'm busy on Wednesday.

* * * * *
We got some snow.

Some of us like it.

* * * * *

Kat's tip of the day:

Crocs. Not so good on snow.

* * * * *
Remember yesterday's moose-y wine? This stuff is good, too.

* * * * *

Experience trumps science.

Whenever I feel the least tickle or sniffle or other symptom of an upper respiratory thing, I break out the vitamin C and take it every hour. [Goes to kitchen and swallows another 500 mg.] That has allowed me to avoid well over half of the colds that have attempted to take over my body in the past ten years or so. I am fully aware that double-blind testing has totally failed to validate the vitamin C vs. URI hypothesis.

I don't care. It works for me. The key for me is to take it immediately upon detecting the first symptom. Two hours later doesn't work. I keep a bottle of 100mg vitamin C tabs in my desk at work, in my purse, and at home.

I sure hope it staves off this thing that keeps threatening me. I've done the vitamin C thing three times since Thursday.

* * * * *

Lucy was very helpful today. She modeled the Dulaan sweater for me.

Lucy, stay!

Good dog, Lucy, stay.

Lucy, GOOD DOG!

Where did her tail go?

Yarn: Lion Brand Wool, color "Flower Garden," and KnitPicks Wool of the Andes, color "Mulled Wine"; 1 strand of each held together; ~500+ yards of each

Needles: Denise interchangables, US#10.5

Pattern: seamless yoke raglan from Ann Budd's Book of Handy Sweater Patterns; 32" circumference -- it looks like it would fit a typical American 5 - 8-year-old child

I LOVED knitting this sweater. Had I not taken out time to knit hats for for Rabbitch's homeless and Rachel's Soaring Eagles Project and a sock and a pair of clogs for Christmas and a scarf and a pair of fingerless mitts and a Calorimetry for myself, it would have been done in three weeks instead of three months. The Lion Brand wool is nothing special but I really like the feel of KP WotA. Knitting the two together made a very thick, warm sweater, perfect for Dulaan.

Until I got to the armholes I had intended to knit the raglan from Ann Budd's book, but when I was nearing that point on the sleeves I realized that the seamless yoke sweater pattern calls for a decreasing row every X inches vs. the raglan, which decreases every other row. Just in case the light bulb didn't go on for you when you read that sentence, let me explain the implications. Row gauge doesn't matter(!) in the seamless raglan. Is that good news or what?

Methinks I shall be knitting more of these seamless yoke raglans.

Cold

When the thermometer says this:

I am very glad I finished these

a few days ago. My hands are not often cold, but wearing these around the house has been like giving my hands a constant hug. Once again, thanks to Susan, my Knitting Coffee Swap buddy, for the beautiful and soft alpaca yarn. She gave me two 110 yard skeins; I used all but 10 yards of one. Now... what to make from the other skein? I'm not a hat person and the yarn is a tad too itchy for a scarf. Ideas?

Yarn: Araucania Atacama, 100% alpaca; ~ 90 yards.

Needles: Crystal Palace bamboo dpns, US#4. The yarn label said size 7s; personally, I think that would make anything of this yarn too loose.

Pattern: Fetching, from Knitty, with mods. Different yarn, different size needles, cast on 40 instead of 45 st, have 3 cables at the wrist and the same at the fingers instead of the three and one called for in the pattern, and cable every 4th row instead of every 5th. That last mod was a *design feature* because I forgot to count rows and had to guess.

I started wearing the right one as soon as I finished it -- better to look silly than have a cold hand, right? -- and was a little worried that the yarn might be too itchy for me. I have never been able to wear wool next to my skin. I wore it to bed that night; one of the times my hands get cold is in bed because I can't find a comfortable position if they are under the covers, and we keep our bedroom cool. My wrist itched a little at first, but by morning the wool didn't bother me at all. Yay -- there is hope!

The dogs wonder why I'm not feeding them/letting them out/filling their water dish.

"Blah blah blah outside blah blah treat blah blah blah."

I F'ed an O!

The scarf, she is fini! How do you like the colors?

I crack myself up.

The way the  blocks of color line up was a delightful surprise to me when I wrapped it 'round my neck.

Yarn: Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool, 3/4+ of a 175m skein of each of #10 woad (faded denim when it's at home), #22 purple, and #28 turquoise, and ~1-1/4 skeins of #24 claret. 
Needles: KnitPicks Options US#6
Gauge: Whatever; this is a scarf, it doesn't matter
Pattern: my own. Cast on 60 st. Begin double knitting: K1, sl1wyif across, ending sl1wyif. Turn and do the same thing across. If you do it right, you end up with a tube closed at both ends. Each section is 28 rows. The first section has 13 rows of purple, 2 rows of red, 13 rows of purple. The second section has 12 rows faded denim, 4 rows red, 12 rows faded denim. Third has 11 rows turquoise, 6 rows red, 11 rows turquiose. And so on until the middle section has 5 rows turquoise 18 rows red, 5 rows turquoise; reverse the number sequence -- but continue the color sequence -- for the second half of the scarf until the last section is 13 rows faded denim, 2 rows red, 13 rows faded denim. I tried binding off as usual, but the bind-off row looked scrunched and didn't match the rest of the knitting. So I bound off by *K2tog twice, then slipping the first stitch over the second as in a normal bind-off* and repeating between the *s. That looked much better.

Coupla things:

• The blues are a little darker and more intense in real life. The darkest blue is actually deep purple. The red in the photos is accurate.
• Right up until I wrapped the scarf around my neck I was thinking I really should have used a Fibonacci stripe pattern. Now I'm satisfied with what I did.
• I'm in my pjs. That explains the boobage somewhere near my waist.
• Heather, the pjs are for you. I may not be knitting, but at least I'm wearing an objet d' knit.