Ruth, above right, of 5elementknitr is doing a huge destash, above left. Go check out her Flickr page and buy some yarn. Instructions on how to buy are on the Flickr page.
Go! Buy! Help Ruth clear out old stash! (Maybe to make room for new stash? who knows?)
Right now it is early summer. The birds are singing, the sun is warm, the breeze is soft. Swimmers frolic in the lake. Fisherpersons cast their lines and hope.
But it will not always be so. One day darkness will fall, a heavy chill will descend, and snow will blanket the land. Winter is coming.*
In preparation I am knitting myself a dandy pair of heavy boot socks. Remember this yarn?
It is in the process of becoming a pair of these:
Yeah, that's three photos of my left foot wearing the same sock. Work with me here.
I am in love with the way the two yarns stranded together make such a nifty marled, ragg sock look.
The oatmeal color of the Lana Grossa Megaboot Stretch works perfectly with the greens and turquoises of the tweedy Online yarn. I held the Lana Grossa next to another colorway of tweedy Online yarn, one that is less green and more blue; the two did not do a thing for each other. But these two seem to have just enough yellow in common to be happy together.
When we were camping on the North Shore a couple weeks ago I felt like I should dress in a flannel shirt, jeans, and hiking boots. And maybe sing, "She's a lumberjack and she's okay / She sleeps all night and she works all day." Maybe these socks are my first step in that direction.
While we are admiring these colors, let us take notice of how these same colors may occur in nature:
I missed a photo op earlier this afternoon of a parade of several adult Canada geese and at least a dozen nearly-grown goslings. These five babies (I had to blow up the photo to 100% to count them; you will just have to trust me on the number) are much, much younger. They are also possible loon lunch. This is the first year since 1991, our first summer here, that we have had both loons AND Canada geese on the lake. The loons always chase away the geese and claim this teeny tiny ocean for their own. Good luck, Mama and Daddy Goose! Take care of those babies! (Although the world does not perhaps really need any more Canada geese.)
* Extra points for anyone who can identify the book[s] from which this comes.
It is a nice walk, albeit almost completely uphill, from my house to our mailbox. Wednesday was a beautiful day so I strolled up the hill to see what goodies Gary The Mailman had left us. In a small town you know everyone. Gary's wife is the librarian in the next town south of us.
I wasn't expecting anything special so I didn't take my camera with me. You will just have to imagine the lovely picture presented to my eyes when I opened the box. A largish white plastic mailing envelope, plump and soft. Could it be... yarn?
It was from a certain knitblogger so yarn was an excellent guess. Either I won something in her recent contest or she was just being a generous friend. I forget which. Aren't knitbloggers just the best, most generous people on earth?
ETA: Okay, I went back and re-read her post about the winners of her blogversary contest. I was not an *official* winner as chosen by the Official Random Integer Generator. She was being extra-special generous to send me something. Wowzers.
Let's take a look, shall we?
What is not visible in this photo is the lovely peppermint fragrance wafting from the envelope's contents.
First, there was what every knitter needs:
A knitting-themed [temporary] tattoo and a feline-themed bookmark. The latter is actually one of Cathy-Cate's Moo cards, I think, but it is destined for a new life in my house as a happy bookmark.
There was a chocolate-nut-caramel confection that lasted about 5 seconds, or as long as it took me to rip it open and pop it into my mouth. Mmmmmm, good.
Here are the official contents, in a less-than worthy photo:
The soap is Queen Bee Driftless Flood Relief Soap, with lemon & peppermint, proceeds of whose sales benefited, through the Sow the Seeds Fund, the farmers in southeast Minnesota and southwest Wisconsin who were flooded out last August. (In case you are wondering, "driftless" refers to the terrain of that area, which is the only area in thousands of square miles of the Midwest that was not scraped flat by glaciers in the last ice age.) A worthwhile cause, to be sure.
The yarn -- that's what you are waiting for, right? the yarn? -- is Cherry Tree Hill Supersock DK, a 100% superwash merino. Cathy-Cate e-mailed me to ask my color preferences, to which I responded "jewel tones." Boy, oh boy, is this jewel-toned or what? The color sends little thrills up my spine.
There are a few random strands of blue-brown in there, too, but I missed them in the photo. I have never knit with Cherry Tree Hill, so this will be extra special. The yarn will soon become a pair of woolly warm winter socks for me for next winter. I've been looking forward to making myself some heavier socks -- these will be my first pair.
Thanks, C-C! You are the best.
We were entertained one night this week by this fellow. Smokey spotted him while he (Smokey, not the raccoon) was watching the evening news.
Mr. Raccoon had been bathing himself while nestled in the crotch of the tree, but when I came out onto the deck to photograph him he decided he needed to come down.
How does a raccoon come down from a tree? Very carefully.
* * * * *
Andrew found out that he could increase his loan for med school enough to cover a new computer. His old one, a $795 Averatec laptop from Sam's Club, had barely made it through four years of college. This time he wanted a good one. 250GB hard drive, 4GB of RAM, screen the size of a soccer field -- he got what he wanted.
He set it up with the dual boot option so he could also run Windows, which is necessary to play several of his video games. $9.27 to a Guatemalan street vendor scored him this:
which is Windows XP Professional en español. That $9.27 also got him MS Office 97, Windows Vista, and a blank-looking CD that the vendor called el crack and which is supposed to keep Vista working after 30 days. He will only use the XP. Piracy is apparently alive and well.
* * * * *
On a more legitimate note:
I cast on this sock Tuesday evening and knit barely an inch that night. On Wednesday I took it with me to the finance committee meeting and knit most of the leg. I have since turned the heel, knit the foot, and I'm currently decreasing for the toe (which is red; these are fun socks). I'll finish it this afternoon.
Now the kicker: I'm actually knitting these on US #0 needles.
I know, I said that life was too short to knit on zeros. This yarn (Online something or other) is what inspired me. I don't remember exactly where I got it but I'm pretty sure I must have won it because I don't remember buying it. It has been sitting next to my desk since early last winter. (Sitting there because I was too lazy to put it away in the sock yarn box at the bottom of my Tower o' Rubbermaid.) I would look at it and try to figure out how best to knit socks from it fast. My plans were to double-strand it with black. Or turquoise. Or white. Or all three, in stripes.
But last weekend I found myself thinking about knitting it on zeros and adding contrasting heels and toes and cuff. Smokey laughed at me when I said I was excited to try it.
But excitement makes the knitting go faster. I have never knit a sock this fast, ever. Given the ridiculous weather we are having (40 degrees at the moment), it is possible I may be able to wear them before true spring gets here.
Thanks to the ever-vigilant Chris, I saw last week that Purling Dervish was having a contest. Off I went to enter, and lo-and-behold, a few days later I got a congratulatory e-mail from Stacy, the Dervish herself. I won! W00t!
Tonight I was heating myself a little dinner in the microwave tucked into the corner of our department -- there is a very nice break room downstairs with tables and banquettes and vending machines and lots of microwaves and a toaster and a toaster oven, but I use my eating time to commune with y'all, so I tend to eat at my desk -- and while my dinner heated (Kashi Chicken Florentine and a bowl of cream of chicken Florentine; sensing a theme here?) I checked the nearby file drawer to see if I had any mail. Wowzers, there was a package for me!
It was soft and squishy -- whatever could it be? Well, I kind of knew because Stacy had said when she posted the contest what the prize would be. Work with me here, 'kay? (The suspense builds.)
Whatever it is, the inner wrappings coordinate well with an individual tax file. Good thing I wasn't working on a partnership return; those files are blue. Or a gift tax return -- those are bright yellow. Horrors! (Suspense builds.)
Could it be.. yarn? (Suspense reaches unbearable level.)
Why, yes! It could be!
And this is not just any yarn. This is Malabrigo 100% merino laceweight. Two (2!) 50-gram skeins. That's 940 yards, folks. Enough to do some serious lace damage.
Now, I am not a lace knitter. I have attempted a few easy lace patterns in the past with less than stellar results. All attempts were frogged after a couple inches. But some say that the key to success in learning something new is to do it with a yarn or fiber that you love.
If so, look out lace -- here I come!
* * * * *
In the interval since I wrote the above, Things Have Progressed. Nora is hosting a shawl KAL. She blogged about it for several days, agonized over her choices, solicited input from her readers as to what shawl she should knit. In the process of reading about it Thursday night I got snagged, er, hooked. The Icarus pattern has been googled, purchased, downloaded, printed, and currently resides in my knitting bag. Icarus is mostly stockinette, with regular columns of k2togs and yos; the *real* lace doesn't come until the end, when I will be ready for it. I hope.
My swift and ballwinder are at the house in Wisconsin, so I sent one skein of the Malabrigo with #2 son, who is going there this weekend with his girlfriend (also a knitter, can he pick 'em or what?) Their assignment is to wind the laceweight into a ball, firm but not too tight, don't wind too fast or the ball will fly off the ball winder, be careful a strand doesn't slip off the winding platform and get tangled in the gears. Can they do it (the winding)? Can I do it (the lace)? Stay tuned.
* * * * *
I had a contest here myself a couple weeks ago. Remember this picture? Now it has a caption.
"I have six stitch markers, the fifth dpn, and the remote. You gotta problem with that?"
Congratulations to Sheepish Annie! Chris and I each picked our own several favorites, then I chose the winner from the overlap.
I know that Annie is a lace knitter, but guess what? That Malabrigo is all mine. Sheepie, you are getting something else (bwahahaha). I already know what the non-fiber, non-chocolate bit will be.
Thanks to everyone who sent funny captions. To be brutally honest, I had an ulterior motive in staging this particular contest: I wanted to entice people to send me things that would make me smile or chuckle or gigglesnort or laugh out loud during this, a rather stressful time of year for me. Last year I just came out and begged. This year I was sneakier.
* * * * *
Now, for your amusement I give you my winning entry in Purling Dervish's contest. First the set-up:
I know, you’re all here for the contest portion of this post. Recently, the possibility of not returning to my current position due to the floppy paw has been brought up. Something about being in front of a computer for 9 hours a day not being conducive to having full use of my arm. I was asked “Have you thought about what job you would do if you couldn’t go back to what you were doing?”
::: blink, blink ::::
::: deafening silence :::::
I hadn’t even considered that. Not on my radar at all. My thoughts were: Doctor fix. Do PT. All better! Return to my job. That makes sense, doesn’t it?
Apparently not.
So the contest… give me an answer. What job could I do? or What job would you do? Don’t worry about education or talent requirements. No answer is too silly or too serious. It just can’t be sitting in front of and using a computer all day.
To get you all started, the first two that came to my mind are:
- phone sex operator
- pastor
No, I do not have issues, why do you ask?
Here’s a review:
- Post your answer to the question “What job could I do?” or “What job would you do?” .
- Let me know if you only knit or if you knit and spin. (I kept typing sit and spin)
- Random number generator will pick three lucky winners.
- I may even throw in a special prize if you make me pee my pants .
I guess her pants landed in the laundry that night because I won the Big PIMPing Prize. And here it is, the pee-pimpin' comment that won the Malabrigo:
Theoretical physicist*
Ethicist
Economist
PhilosopherThe common factor among these, of course, is that those people don’t really DO anything. They read a lot, they think a lot more, and then they talk. Endlessly. The floppy paw thing? No problemo, dude.
My personal choice would be Empress of the Universe. But I would hire others to make all the decisions I didn’t want to be bothered with and to enforce my decisions on the important stuff: what sodas to have in the vending machine, what the chef should make for dinner tonight, what to knit next. You know, the important stuff.
* I have been listening to a biography of Albert Einstein, the theoretical physicist to end all theoretical physicists. (He specialized in thought experiments.) And I've always been fascinated by non-Newtonian physics, although I will freely admit I don't really grok it. See the quotation visible in the first photo, above.
This package arrived a few days ago.
Whatever could it be?
Yarn. What a surprise.
Eight 116 gm skeins, probably about 2000 yards, of fire-engine red woolly goodness. Maybe superwash, maybe a wool blend, but BRIGHT and soft and yummy.
Two skeins of Brooks Farm Limited Edition I in a mottled brick red and brown, mmmmmm.
One skein of Brooks Farm Acero in a mottled blue-brown, ditto.
The red is destined for charity knitting. It is a fat worsted weight, perfect for hats and mittens and warm sweaters.
What will I make with the Brooks Farm? Um... Look, over there, a badger with a gun! Do you see him?*
In other words, I don't know yet. It would be perfect for a lacy shawl. However, I. Do. Not. Knit. Lace. (Yet.) Time will tell.
You may remember that Norma had a destash sale on New Year's Day; I didn't make my "no yarn in 2008" resolution until a few days later. Therefore I did not break my resolution, nope, not me, uh-uh, no way.
* Brownie points for anyone who knows the source of this quote.
I am sensing some doubt skepticism incredulity in the comments to yesterday's post about not buying any yarn until 2008 2009.
I typed 2008 in yesterday's post, now corrected. A Freudian slip? I prefer to think it is just that I had not yet fully adjusted to the fact that the current year is 2008 instead of that long-time favorite, 2007. Yup, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Apparently none of my readers had any trouble at all in deciphering my true meaning, since no one mentioned it.
I would be incredulous as well except for the fact that as soon as I thought of this resolution I felt as though a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. You know the feeling when you have several large projects due soon and you're not sure you can accomplish them all in the time available and then your supervisor/boss says that none of the projects is still required except the one you are already half done with? Yeah, that feeling.
Perhaps part of the relief -- aside from the knowledge that I will be working down what has become a psychic weight on my soul -- stems from having the dictates of what to knit come from only one source, the yarn itself. I won't have to attempt that balancing act of reconciling my stash with the external calls for objet d'knit.
This is a lot of navel gazing over what is, after all, just a bunch of sheep fur. But navel gazing is fun and can be productive when, as in this case, it leaves one feeling lighter.
* * * * *
Just so's you know? I've already broken that sub-resolution about clicking Delete for e-mails from Knit Picks rather than opening them. After some thought I realized that all the KP e-mails have tempted me into buying yarn only once, that time when they had selected colors of Wool of the Andes on sale. So I opened their e-mail that came today. And bought no yarn, yay!
It is January 5 and I have [finally] arrived at my official New Year's resolution.
You ready for this? It's gonna blow your mind.
I got home about 11:30 Monday night after my weekend travels to visit old friends. The dogs came with me. They are good travelers.
Here they are in the back of the Aveo. Mostly they slept, but sometimes Lucy watched over my shoulder so she could navigate. And whenever I got out of the car, when I came back she was in the driver's seat. Every single time.
Since this is purportedly a knitting blog, I shall tell you about the souvenir yarn that came home with me. My friend Connie tried to take me to a yarn shop but apparently it had gone out of business. No LYS in Grand Forks, North Dakota, folks, only Michael's and JoAnne Fabrics. Not to worry, though, I still managed to pick up some of that fuzzy string:
Light blue, pale lime green, and terra cotta -- this Cotton Ease will make dandy unisex striped preemie hats for Jeanne's annual January preemie hat extravaganza.
I was working on socks and mittens for the Soaring Eagles Project* while on my travels, and I picked up some red, green, and cream Wool-Ease to go with the variegated Plymouth Encore Colorspun I had along. No photos of that, too boring. I'll take pictures of the finished items before I mail them off.
In Park Rapids to see my old friend Kathy (she IS my oldest friend -- I've known her since we were 14, and she is one day older than I am) I hit the jackpot. Turns out there is an excellent yarn shop in town, Monika's Quilt Shop. Kathy frequents the store because she is a quilter, so she gave me a tour of the vast selection of quilt fabrics. Then we walked into the yarn section.
Heaven! Cascade, Noro, Misty Alpaca, Malabrigo, and lots, lots more. Lovely colors, lots of knitted swatches, nicely arranged, a wide range of prices and qualities and brands -- truly everything a knitter might want. The Cascade 220 was $6.60/skein, which struck me as a very good price. It was amazing to me to find such a well-stocked yarn store with decent prices in my old home town. I kept telling Kathy I wanted to move it to my current stomping grounds.
I got some washable worsted weight wool for Soaring Eagles Project mittens in lively kid colors:
And some sock yarn, destined to be double-stranded with some slightly mottled pale beige Trekking for a pair of gift socks next year:
Yes, I'm going to double-strand Trekking. Life is too short to knit on US#0s. Or even US#1s.
* Thanks to all of you who have stepped up to the challenge! I bet we will help Rachel reach her goal in time.
* * * * *
It is winter here today.
Lucy has the right idea:
Wrap your tail 'round your nose and take a nap.
I won another contest! This one was at Big Alice's -- look at the great sock yarn she sent me! Thanks, Carrie!
And look at the sock that someone in Ravelry (wolldruide) is making from a slightly different color of this yarn -- I don't know if I will ever make these socks, but wow! aren't they something to aspire to? Pattern is from Charlene Church's More Sensational Knitted Socks.
I bought some yarn from Webs. (They keep sending me e-mails, tempting me with their sale yarns -- I refuse even to click on the yarns that are not on sale; not that their non-sale prices are bad, just that I Don't Need More Yarn.) This is Noro Aurora (wool/mohair/silk/polyester), enough for a striped scarf for me a la Jared. You may not be able to see it in the photos, but the 5% polyester in the yarn is sparkly :)
I finished another Calorimetry for myself:
That's Paton's Soy Wool Stripes, cast on 96 st on size US#6s. I've been wearing it and loving it.
But we are not totally about the mememe! here at Chez Kat. I knitted three squares for Kay to include in her afghan for Oliver's Fund. It proved to be impossible to get the colors right in the photo; the red is tomato, the darks are more subtle:
I'm making a couple pairs of kid's socks for the Soaring Eagles Project using Plymouth Encore Colorspun (hair added because... it's everywhere):
Wait, what is that weird tube thing I'm using?
It is a keeper for projects on circular needles. Invented by The Tsock Tsarina and available here. The place where I really, really need to use this is on the kimono sweater -- I cannot count how many times I have grabbed the sweater out of my knitting bag and pulled the needle out of the fabric. Arrgggh. No more, though :)
* * * *
For those of you who were freaked out by yesterday's serial killer post, let me assure you that Matthew's remark was made in jest. It was last July so I don't remember the full context; not to worry, though, no living creatures were harmed in the making of the funny.
Seriously, is this the face of a serial killer?
Awhile back I won Deb's happy hour contest. Forgetful as I am, my winning slipped my mind until she apologized a few weeks ago about not sending my prize(s) yet. No problem, Deb!
Then she posted this on Monday. Go read it; it will make you laugh. I'll wait.
Okay, back now? Here is what arrived in yesterday's mail (as I was opening the box I kept thinking about how I really should take photos of the unopened box, the partially opened box, yada, yada, but since I am all about the non-delay of gratification you will have to use your imagination to fill in the intermediate steps):
Well, well, well; clearly this is not the kitty that the menagerie at Chez Kat were hoping for. Hannibal and En Esch were planning to teach that new kitty how to dash out the door when Kat lets the dogs out; Lucy was wondering if this kitty knew about the "no claws" rules when batting at her nose. All does not appear to be lost, however. Let's take a closer look, shall we?
We have a kit for making felted flowers:
Those funny-looking pins at stage right are the glass-tipped stamens for the flowers. Somebody used their creative imagination to design this kit.
A keychain sock blocker, plus instructions and yarn (STR, yay!) to make a tiny sock for it (crayons added by me for, um, color):
Was there yarn in the prize? Yes, there was yarn in the prize -- dyed by Deb's own hand during one of her [in]famous Saturday dyeing sessions with Chris and Jeanne. I'm a big fan of jewel tone colors, so I was thrilled with what she sent.
There was yummy Henry's Attic Treadsoft (100% merino superwash) for a pair of socks:
and gorgeous Henry's Attic Pony laceweight (100% fine merino), perhaps for a scarf:
Tragically, my camera refused to capture the true colors of the sock yarn. The darker bits, which look teal-gray in the photo, are actually much brighter, some of them bright teal. I love the look of contrasting heels and toes on my socks, so I'm thinking I will search out some suitable teal yarn for those parts. I was able to tweak the colors in the second photo so they are fairly accurate. Yum. Do I detect Chris's [purple] influence in this one?
But it's not all about the yarn. It's really all about the love...
Thanks, Deb! (And doesn't she have the coolest handwriting on the planet?)
* * * * *
Knitting of the kimono sweater was interrupted yesterday by the opening of an eBay package that arrived while I was at the tax conference earlier in the week. Four skeins of Noro Silk Garden, 2 each of 244 and 251, for yet another Noro scarf Christmas gift:
Say it with me now: Mmmmm!
My photo experiments posted last Friday record the beginning and ending of a frogging project. Last year I offered to knit Andrew's girlfriend a sweater. We decided on this one from Knitty:
After much e-mailing back and forth and visiting of yarn shops and discussion about color and softness on the skin, I bought yarn and started knitting. Swatched, washed same. Gauge = happy. Knit the back. Sent it to her to check on the sizing. Received request for additional length. Time passed. They broke up. Sadness. Indecision. Should I still knit the sweater for her? Um... no. The project stalled, never to be completed, while I pondered what to do with the yarn.
It wasn't suitable for charity sweaters -- too expensive, too soft/unlikely to survive hard wear, plus the machine washability, something I specifically looked for for this sweater, would not be useful in Mongolia or Afghanistan.
I had combined two strands of the worsted-weight Gems with one strand of Socks That Rock in the color Carbon Dating to achieve the gauge and tweedy nature of the yarn called for in the original pattern. I was extremely pleased with the result; too bad it wasn't gonna happen now.
I pondered incorporating the STR into my own sweater but eventually decided against it. This yummy stuff is now on the needles for a Baby Surprise Jacket for a coworker's possibly-yet-to-be-conceived baby.
But there wasn't enough of the Gems for a sweater for me. What to do, what to do?
Then another blogger, either Juno or Cara, destashed this lovely stuff:
Exactly the same yarn in a gorgeous garnet that -- to my eye at least -- would go very well with the heathery grape Louet Gems I had. Sold!
Now the problem was the pattern. Eventually I decided I wanted a big ol' wrap-myself-up-in-it kind of sweater to envelope me when the winter winds blow and the house is chilly. At first I assumed I would use a basic pattern from Ann Budd's The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns; specifically a shawl-collared cardigan.
[digression] I'd like to insert a plug for this book, plus her other similar title, A Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns, which has, in addition to a basic sweater, patterns for basic gloves, mittens, hats, and scarves and multiple sizes and gauges. These books are to a knitter what an encyclopedia and thesaurus are to a writer. [/digression]
I pondered how best to combine the colors and decided that the lower half of the body and sleeves would be garnet and the upper half grape and that there would be some possibly Fibonacci-type stripes at the transition.
So it was settled: all that remained was to determine proper size and stitch count, wind the skeins into balls, and cast on. As soon as I had finished the fund raising knitting for the library that I had committed to over the summer and early fall, this sweater would be the next thing on my needles. And then there was the Red Scarf Project. That took some time, too.
In the interim I toyed with instead using Norah Gaughan's tilted duster pattern from the latest IK but eventually decided that its construction, clever though it was, might be difficult to adjust for proper sizing and flattering fit for my ::cough::ample curves::cough:: I also wasn't quite sure how it would work in two colors.
Somewhere in the interim I saw and immediately ordered this book.
What? you say. Kimono are nothing but rectangles sewn together. Where is the knitting joy in that? But my favorite kind of knitting is the mindless kind. Miles of ribbing? Bring it on! Pattern stitches? Boo, hiss. Oceans of stockinette? Sheer bliss.
But the real appeal is deeper than that. I found in college that I had a deep love of Japanese art. Prints, graphics, whatever, their utter simplicity and elegance spoke to my soul in unexplainable ways. They just felt... right.
Hiroshige and Hokusai in particular were a delight to my eye.
This love of Japan expanded for a while into everything Japanese, but after we hosted a Japanese foreign exchange student for five months in 1988 I found that I had some serious problems with certain aspects of Japanese culture. My professor for various Chinese and Japanese art history classes had summed up Japanese art as "profoundly superficial," which is wonderful in a visual medium but as a value system? It sucked rocks. Perhaps it was just our student; who can be more superficial than a teenage girl?
But the visual appeal has remained strong these 20 or 30 years. Even though the garments in this book had apparently little in common with the beloved Japanese prints of my college years, they shared that same elegance and economy of form. And they would be simplicity itself to fit.
A couple pieces in the book appealed particularly:
The author also included a 2-page section just for me.
I'm on my way!
* * * * *
NaBloPoMo = National Blog Posting Month.
I'm on my way on that, too!
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.
On Tuesday I went on a St. Paul yarn crawl with Eloise, Joan, Kay, Nelda, and Peggy of the Amery (WI) Fiber Guild. Another friend, Julie, a Guild member who knits and spins and does who-knows-what-all-creative-stuff with fiber, invited me many months ago to come to a guild meeting with her, but first my tax season work and then her summer living on a sailboat on Lake Superior (!) interfered. I had been waiting for her to get back home so I could attend my first Guild function with her, but when I learned of this yarn crawl it was just too good to pass up. So I invited myself along.
Our first stop was 3 Kittens Yarn Shoppe in St. Paul.
I hadn't been to 3 Kittens in nearly ten years. I remembered it as a smallish shop with twice as much inventory as space but with a great selection of wonderful yarns. The new owners have rearranged and brightened and lightened the place but retained the excellent selection of yarns. Nicely displayed, too; see llama/alpaca in the second photo.
We were greeted warmly by one of the owners when we arrived, and she started to give us a tour of the shop. "This room is needlepoint supplies and this wall has all the felting yarns and..." Then she introduced us to another of the owners. "This is the St. Whatsis Prayer Ministry group." And we all looked at each other. I may be new to this group but I was pretty sure it wasn't from St. Whosis and had no more than a passing interest in prayer shawls. Nelda identified us properly and everyone had a good laugh. And the owner continued to give us the tour, which was nice because there is so much yarn it is a bit overwhelming.
A couple of the owners graciously consented to be photographed. I think they were hard at work deciding on yarns to order.
I wish I could tell you their names because they were so friendly and helpful and nice, but I'm a total git and forgot the names as soon I heard them. I'm sorry, ladies, but thanks for the good time! and the sock yarn! 
Next stop was The Yarnery, the Grande Olde Dame of St. Paul yarn shops. That's one of our group heading up the steps.
No mistaken identities here. We wandered about, petted the yarn, and miracle of miracles! I found some more sock yarn to buy!
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Perhaps I should explain my purchases. No, I am not going on a dull- subtle-colored sock-knitting binge. These are all intended for a sweater (for me! the first one since 1980!) that I have been mulling over in my head for more than a year. The night before the yarn crawl I had decided Dang it! I'm gonna start that sweater! A timely decision, as it turned out, since I knew I didn't have as many colors of yarn as I needed; at 3 Kittens my mission became apparent to me.
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After all that hard-working yarn crawling, we were hungry. Plus it was noon and we were in one of the best places in the Twin Cities to find ourselves in that calorie-craving state: the Victoria Crossing area on Grand Avenue. Cafe Latté to the rescue.
Unfortunately, I was such a bad blogger at lunch that I took exactly zero pictures. Imagine if you will six women, five with gorgeous salads and bread and one with a delicious bowl of salmon stew. And a slice of raspberry tart that she generously shared with the rest of us. Mmmmm, thanks, Peggy.
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Our third stop was Borealis Yarns, which may have been my personal favorite. I'd only been there once before; I'd liked it a lot and planned to go again, but yesterday I discovered that the first time I had missed a whole other room filled with sock yarn. And a clearance area. It was heaven and kismet, rolled into one, I tell you.
The Pace skeins were from the clearance table -- $4.80/each, 50g, 220 yds. The two in front are deep, deep heathery charcoal, a color I had been seeking for a year. Woot!
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Back into the car for the drive to our last stop, Knit'n from the Heart. It is in Woodbury, an upscale and fast-growing suburb of St. Paul. Such locales are not near and dear to my heart, but I was willing to suffer it for the yarn. I'm all about the sacrifice, ya know?
Because it is a new and apparently well-capitalized shop, the stock was both tidy and ample. There was even a cute baby there when we arrived (sorry, no photo, bad blogger, yadayada).
Here are Kay and Eloise checking out the patterns and books. And the comfy chairs.
My purchases here were of a slightly different sort:
The latest issue of Knit Simple, purchased solely for the Norah Gaughan modular bag pattern at the left (I already have yarn* for it, and I think I may knit the hexagons larger and felt it); 2 tiny bottles of Eucalan to include with Noro Christmas scarves, and a skein of Colinette Jitterbug sock yarn. This one is for actual socks, though. The colors are a bit odd -- brownish-green-khaki-ish with occasional shots of red, gold, and a gorgeous deep teal -- but they called to me so strongly I could not leave the yarn behind.
And then it was time for the color- and texture- and fiber-dazzled group to make their way back to Wisconsin. We did drive past one more yarn shop but it is open by appointment only on Tuesdays; the organizer was reminded of that fact a bit too late to make an appointment for us. It's okay, though; that shop will make a great destination on another day.
A great day and new fiber friends -- thanks to the Amery Fiber Guild for being so welcoming. I'll see y'all again next month!
* Nashua Wooly Stripes, purchased online and at closeout at Webs for $4.99/ball; the exact same yarn in the exact same color was $10/ball at Knit'n from the Heart. Heh.
It would be massive understatement to say I don't care for this Blood Brothers' song, but the lyrics -- especially the bits about xylophone trees and skin-cooking coffins -- are some of the more creative ones I have ever read.
Ambulance X extracts several consultants
from the slow gumming death at the office orifice.
Ambulance Y imprisons the sigh of the recent amputee
and dumps her in the xylophone trees.
Ambulance X scours the tanning complex for repunzels
rotting in their skin-cooking coffins.
Ambulance Y drops the body off at the door step.
Ambulance X pulls you out of the party
and rubs your freckles like a DJ to his records
but Ambulance Y teaches you the word goodbye
and cuts off your hands to show you where you stand,
under the monolith of what is love and what is scam,
what is sun and what is tan.
The Ambulance Angels pull up to your doorstep
the sirens flash emergency,
"you'd better come quick."
The Ambulance Angels chisel a crack in your mouth,
and then they paint a landscape with your regret and shouts.
Roll tape and decode the moans,
ventilate the scandal from these locked up mouth holes.
You'll never see your wife
and children again so tell us what it was going through your head,
when you looked into their eyes
and said "no thanks i'll take the hooker instead"
You'll never see that office again
so when the nurse amputates both of your thighs
come a little bit closer to the mic
and tell us what you miss more your desk or the hungry sky.
The Ambulance Angels pull up to the graveyard,
and leave you there bubbling broken sonnets and shards.
The Ambulance Angels notify your next of kin
and show them the scrap book of your operation:
His head was a faucet leaking love, laughter and lies:
all his secret wishes, all his world famous sighs.
Before you remember, Oh yeah, before you give in,
just remember we're coming back for your children.
And now for the performance. Thanks to Matthew for sharing this song with me. Warning: if you don't care for screaming hard core either, you will want to skip this and go right on to The Kinks.
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The Kinks.
Here's what I'm knitting right now.
It's another Noro scarf, this time for a gift and this time actually knitted from Noro Silk Garden. Yeah, I know I talked up the Plymouth Boku a few days ago, but for this particular gift scarf the Boku didn't have the perfect colors. So I bit the bullet and went for the Noro. That yarn is a bit... problematic, though. Look at this.
The Kinks. All four balls kinked like that right from the skein. Grrrrrr. It is annoying to have to stop and untwist the yarn as I knit. My knitting technique is such that I twist S-twist yarns and untwist Z-twist ones as I knit. The Silk Garden is a Z-twist but my unconscious automatic untwisting doesn't seem to be happening with this yarn. Or, more likely, it is happening but the yarn is so freakin' overtwisted that my untwisting is undetectable.
I can find a lot to complain about in Noro yarns. The overtwisting, the vegetable matter, the extreme irregularities in the thickness, the sometimes weird color combinations, the occasional Blob (that's a technical term) of untwisted, unincorporated fiber. I think it shows an incredible lack of respect for the materials, for spinning technique, and for the knitter.
And yet, I am finding this stuff strangely compelling. After a while I got used to the irregularities, I forgot to notice the VM, and the occasional Blob™ became a charming feature. Oh, look how cute and fuzzy the yarn is there! Isn't that sweet?
All this is to say, last night I found myself over at eBay. Looks what is coming to live at my house (temporarily; it is intended for another Christmas gift scarf):
times 2, and
times 2.
Oh, how we are tempted, and how easily we, er, I fall. And the falling is such fun.
Took a little break from photographing stash for Ravelry. I was having such a good time. C'mon over and say hi. I'm kmkat, same as here.
Have you discovered this website? New secrets posted every Sunday.
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This is, of course, for the Red Scarf Project, Norma's favorite cause. If you look carefully you can see that the non-red stripes are two colors, purple and navy. I'm hoping that this can qualify as a guy's scarf, since they are often short on those. The colors are a little deeper than they show on my monitor. Here is a more accurate picture of the reddish yarn, from the Smiley's site:
The reddish yarn is Puno (100% alpaca) from Filatura Lanarota, bought on sale last year from Smiley's Yarns. I thought it was lovely soft until I felt the purple and blue yarn that I bought this summer to go with it. They are KnitPick's Andean Silk, "55% Super Fine Alpaca, 23% Silk, 22% Merino Wool," in the colors called hyacinth and navy, and that yarn is unbelievably soft. I bought some in the sangria colorway, too, but it turned out to be too close to the color of the original alpaca to make an effective combination. The KP is very strong -- when I need to change colors I can break the Puno alpaca with my hands, but I need to get out the scissors for the KP blend. Must be the silk.
Anyway, between the lusciousness of the yarns and the knowledge that scarf will keep a college student warm next winter, I am enjoying this scarf project a lot. I think I will have enough yarn left for another red scarf. They are due between September 1 and October 15, so I should have no trouble finishing (she said blithely).
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Thanks for all the birthday wishes on Friday. We ate humongous steaks Thursday night and today Smokey and I went out for a fabulous brunch here. I am now officially 29... times 2.
I won Carole's Tour de Fleece contest last month by guessing how much fleece she would spin during the TdF, and looky what arrived in the mail today from her!
That's three (3!) skeins of KP laceweight alpaca, a skein of fun Opal sock yarn, and the yummiest hand-made (by JoVE) soap ever! I already have plans for the sock yarn. The alpaca may look black in the photo, but it is actually deep, deep blackish-blue with one extremely fine ply of bright blue hidden in there. Mmmm, 1200+ yards of gorgeous laceweight alpaca, I think I may see a shawl somewhere in my [distant] future [when my knitting skills are up to lace]. The soap is "...scented with pure essential oils of orange, tangerine, cassia and clove, with added ground cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, ginger, allspice, and orange peel." It smells wonderful.
Thanks, Carole, you rock!
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I got this link today in an e-mail from a friend. It has amazing photos of the bridge collapse. Some, maybe all, of them appear to have been taken by newspaper photographers, but the link seems to be to the LiveJournal blog of a Russian-speaker in Norway. Ah, the internets...
How about a stash tour? I have been organizing*.
This was taken during the Kat's Great Stash Reorganization Extravaganza of 2007 and represents about 1/3 of my stash.
Last week I bought some more of those 33-qt. Rubbermaid under-bed storage boxes, like the ones at top and right above, to reorganize my stash. The four I had just weren't doing the job anymore. (They worked fine for twenty years, right up until I became A Knitter, as opposed to someone who knits.) Large portions of the stash were being housed in cardboard boxes poised helter skelter around the laundry/craft room. I haven't been able to fold laundry on the laundry table for, oh, about two months. Ever since that last Knit Picks Wool of the Andes sale, I think.
