Today’s musical accompaniment: Theme song from “Pinky and the Brain”. Narf!

Friday was an absolutely gorgeous day - temperatures in the high 50s - low 60s and loads of warm, beautiful sunshine.  Saturday was rainy but maybe even a hair warmer than Friday.  We’re back in the deep freeze now, in fact there were cold warnings last night because the effective temperature outside (factoring in wind chill, etc.) was -25/-35 F.  It is, however, supposed to go back up to the 40s by mid-week.  Whee!!  Welcome to the January roller coaster :)

Now, I remember saying something about working out the problems with the Saxon braid cable :) I didn’t do that, I abandoned it.  I decided to try something (stop snickering back there!) I’d been wondering about.  The fuschia cable is nearly my favorite of all time and I’ve been wondering for a while now how it would looked if it was worked upside down.  So I made a chart that vertically mirrors the original and went to work…

It turned out remarkably well and I love the result.  This swatch has been washed and blocked and I’m thrilled with the look and feel of it.  It’s still not what you call soft exactly - well, it’s not merino, is it?  But it has a silky hand to it that I really didn’t expect.  I used a combination shampoo/conditioner on it and am pretty pleased with the results :)

In fact that experiment was such a success that I decided to try another (I have never swatched so much in my life!).  So I took the open braid cable and made another chart that horizontally mirrors the original…

I’m nearly as in love with the way this came out as I am with the first one.  These are going to be my main cables for the sweater.  Up until now I’ve been playing around, sampling this and that - but these two really make me happy so I think I’m finally settled.  Well, I also think I’m going to trade the 4-stitch honeycomb for a 4-stitch rope cable.

I have to start work on my saddles now and I expect to begin that this afternoon after I’ve double checked my measurements.  This is fun, you know it?

In other news…

...that is, the color looks like terra cotta in the morning sunlight in my kitchen.  But at other times the color has looked more pumpkin-ish, and still other times almost an orangey-gold!  Have I stumbled on the alexandrite of the yarn world here?  View it in different lights and watch its color change?  Dichroic yarn, anyone?  Heheh…

Now, let me pass along a stupid little something I did over the weekend being desperate for something a little sweet and having nothing in the house that fit the bill.

To a 1/2 cup of sugar (I’ll have to try brown sugar too), add:

2 tsp ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
Less than 1/8 tsp cloves

Mix this all together till it’s well blended.
Take a piece of pita bread and split in half along the outer edge so that you wind up with two round pieces of bread.  Put one piece back in the bag or give it to a friend :)

Spread with a tsp of butter, sprinkle with a tsp of spiced sugar and place on a paper towel in the microwave.  Nuke it for 30 seconds.  Take it out of the microwave (and be careful, the bottom will be very hot) and roll it up while its still warm.  This tastes like Christmas and only costs 110 calories.

Yummy!

Okay, I promised cables and cables we have :)

I was a bit nervous about this, you know, juggling different repeats and keeping everything in order.  It didn’t turn out to be nearly the hassle I thought it was going to be.  I wound up writing out all my charts by hand.  I do have a printer, but it needs an ink cartridge and frankly, that money is better spent on yarn, in my opinion :) So I sat down with the charts for the various cables I wanted to use and copied them all out onto graph paper.





To tell the truth, I think doing it this way helped me to get a better feel for how things were going to go together.  And it certainly helped with my fledgling ability to read charts comfortably.  Though it took a few hours, I feel it was well worth doing!

I have made some substitutions for the cables that were originally suggested and for the most part, I’m happy with how they look.

I have no idea what this braid is really called, or if it even has a name.  It’s the cable used in the Pinwheel Hat and I like it a lot - so I used it again here.





The Fuschia cable is simply my name for this.  It comes from Stanfield’s The New Knitting Stitch Library which, sadly, appears to be out of print.  The stitches aren’t named at all in this volume so I just slapped a name on it.  The sweater is going to be worked from the top down so the cables will be upside down from the way they appear here.  Turning this upside down reminded me of the fuschia flower a bit, so I called it that.  I used this before in the Peony Purse.  The smaller cables on the side are baby honeycombs worked over four stitches.  Pretty cute :)





The big cable here is the Saxon Braid, featured in Knitty’s Samus cardigan.  As you can see, I’ve managed to foul up the crossings although I’m still not sure how it happened.  I’ve gone over the pattern and I did copy it correctly.  I want to work this through another repeat and see if I can figure out what I did wrong.  Other than the crossings, I like the cable a lot and hope to use it (or maybe a doubled version of it) as the center cable of the sweater.  The little borders are a two-stitch rope cable.

On tap for the weekend: working out the kinks in the Saxon braid, finishing the Dulaan socks and, maybe, starting another afghan :)

Happy Friday the 13th!

First things first.  Thank you all very much for your incredibly supportive comments to Monday’s post.  You helped me to feel so much better (and less nervous) about moving in a new direction with my knitting.  You folks are pretty wonderful!

Well, yesterday turned out to be productive despite an iffy beginning.

See, we have a leak.  Well, more accurately, the upstairs neighbors have a leak which is ruining our hall ceiling and wall and beginning to impinge on the kitchen as well.

Last Thursday there was a knock on the door.  One of the construction workers (cute one too!) who have been re-doing the apartment below us told me that someone would be by Friday or Saturday to have a look at things.

Okay, fine.  So we stayed home Friday and Saturday.  Think anybody showed up?

Yesterday, we planned to finally get the Christmas tree out, return all our bottles and cans (which have been building up since before the holidays), hit the hospital for my regularly scheduled blood work, do some badly needed general shopping and stop by dad’s.  So early in the morning, with Myria in the shower and me still in my nightclothes, there was a knock on the front door.  It was the landlord - and he wanted to bring in the plumber in 20 minutes.

Amidst much gnashing of teeth (not to mention pissing and moaning) we were able to finish showering and get ourselves dressed before the gentlemen arrived.  And we sat at the kitchen table while our whole morning drifted away to the sounds of drills and hammers.  In the end, nothing was done.  They’ll let us know when they’ll be back.

Nifty…

We did, eventually, get out and we did get everything done but lost further time at the hospital where they seemed to think I was there for something else entirely.  It took an hour (and conversations with three different people) to get things straightened out.  The actual blood letting drawing took only a couple of minutes.

Actual Knitting Content

I have started another pair of socks for my Dulaan bag.  They are the Mini Basketweave Toddler’s Socks over at Stitches of Violet.  I’ve made these before and they are an absolute delight to work, so fast and easy that they practically knit themselves.  The yarn is Classic Elite Wings. 

Marguerite also has a little vest pattern that I think I’m going to try too - just as cute as the socks and just as carefully thought out :)

I have been looking at a particular knit-along for a while now and dithering about whether I really wanted to do it.  I finally made up my mind.  I have joined Janet Szabo’s aran knit-along (Follow the Leader Aran Knit-along, also known as FLAK.

I have been sort of half-ass planning this for a while now.  In fact I’d been thinking about it long enough to decided I would make this first effort out of nice, washable, inexpensive acrylic.  The idea was that if I didn’t finish the thing, I wouldn’t have wasted a lot of money and that while acrylic might not make an authentic Aran, it could make a perfectly nice sweater in the Aran style.

All that turned out to be a crock of sheep dip :) When I sat down last night (after we finally got home) to cast on for the cable swatch, I looked at the acrylic (lovely shade of blue violet, too) and then looked at the Fisherman’s Wool.  I went for the wool.  So, I’ll be getting some more of that :)

Yeah, yeah, I know.  On the excitement scale, that last picture ranks right up there with moldy bread :) I really intended to work on the cable swatch and I got it cast on and purled back.  Then I started the first pattern row and screwed it up less than 10 stitches from the beginning (but didn’t discover it until I was halfway down the row) and decided I was maybe too tired to make a good job of this just now.

So I’ll be working on this for the next couple of days and hopefully, will have some cables to show you on Friday!

I’ve never been a parrot-head, but this morning for no reason I can think of, I woke up with Jimmy Buffet’s Son of a son of a sailor running through my head.  I own no Buffet CDs and have not heard him on the radio recently so I have no idea where the song came from.

I almost always wake up with music in my head.  Often it’s something I heard the day before - a song, a jingle sometimes even the music from a game that Myria’s been playing.  It isn’t unusual for the same song to show up several mornings in a row.  Once in a while it’s even a song I don’t like much - those are interesting mornings.

This has been a life-long thing for me.  Myria goes through this too so I don’t think it’s too unusual - not time yet for the guys in the white coats with the industrial strength butterfly nets :) And, at any given time of the day, one of us might ask the other what their accompaniment is - in other words, what music is playing in your head at the moment? Sometimes it’s the song you woke up with.  Sometimes it’s something else entirely - but there’s always something playing.

I have wondered many time over many years if there’s any significance to the soundtrack.  It doesn’t seem to be tailored to the circumstances and situations of my life or, if it does, it fits the way a clown suit would fit - never where you think it should and always outrageously.

I seem to have reached a plateau - at least that’s what they call it when you’re dieting and you get to a certain place where everything just stops.  I have done no knitting or crocheting for days - with the exception of many attempts to get myself going on something all of which wound up in the frog pond.  I don’t have an idea in my head and while I’ve pored over every book and magazine I own (and haunted all the pertinent web sites), nothing seems appealing.

Part of it is that I feel compelled to produce for the blog.  Those of you who also have blogs may recognize the feeling :) What happens is that I start something so that I’ll have something to write about and, very often, I’ll abandon the project as soon as something new (to write about) comes along.  I don’t want to craft this way.  I want to start a project and stick with it until its done - unless there’s some very good reason for letting it go. 

I guess I feel as though my whole approach to knitting (and so many other things) has been pretty scattershot.  With most of my crafting, I reached a point where I was comfortable with what I knew and felt reasonably competent to create almost anything I wanted.  And then I’ve gone on to the next thing.

I don’t want to do that with the knitting.  Knitting has become a lot of things to me - not the least of which is the possibility of providing for myself things that reflect me.  Garments that are the shape I want them to be in the colors I like.  Blankets that will be doubly warm because I made them and far more interesting than the finest bought cashmere throw because the stitch patterns and colors tell a story I want to tell.

But I have a lot to learn.  The only sweater I have ever made was a pint-sized baby aran that involved very little shaping.  And it’s the shaping I need to learn about.  What happens if I decrease in this ratio or increase in that ratio.  How about using ribbing at the side waist for shaping there instead of decreasing?  Would that work and what would it look like?  Is it possible to craft a sweater such that it will have its own prosthetic, occasionally relieving me of the necessity of wearing a bra?  I need to work to acquire that knowledge.  I haven’t been actively avoiding it but I haven’t been exactly seeking it out either - and casting on another scarf or shawl isn’t going to help me here :)

I suppose, in a way, I’ve been formulating new years resolutions for my knitting - and perhaps that’s why I haven’t gotten anywhere for a week or so.  In the back of my mind, I’ve been trying to figure out what’s next and whether or not I wanted to do what was required.  I have decided that I do.  So, over the next year, I’ll be working on some things I’ve never done before and maybe some projects that will take quite a while to complete.  I will try very hard not to be boring, but I can’t guarantee there won’t be a real ho-hum of a post from time to time.

And I promise to share whatever I learn.  As frustrating as the learning process can be, I can think of only one thing more satisfying - sharing the knowledge :)

We’ve both been dragging our butts for the last couple of days with nasty colds, sneezing, coughing, miserable headaches.  It’s funny too because though we live together, we are seldom both sick at the same time and we clearly have the same bug with my symptoms showing up about 18 hours after Myria’s.  Well, let’s hear it for winter bugs - with a hey sneezy sneezy and an Ah-choo-choo!

I thought I had a wonderful idea for a snazzy pair of fingerless gloves - and I’d been thinking about expanding my wardrobe of same for a while.  So I went to work with KnitPicks Merino Style DK and a set of size 3 DPNS.  I had been thinking (always a dangerous proposition) that I could make the body of the mitt in wide ribs but instead of using regular stockinette for the rib, I’d use seed stitch!  Then I had an even better notion - I could make seed stitch diamonds up the wide ribs.  Oh that seemed like such a cool idea - until I tried it.

The fundamental problem is that these are meant for the hand - the appendage you use for absolutely everything - especially activities like grasping and holding?  Do you know what happens when you grab something with a palm full of itty-bitty seed stitches?  It feels like a bunch of pebbles is being pushed into your skin.  Sigh...frog…

I frogged it back to the cuff and went on with the ribbing some more while I figure out what to do.

The ribbing is a K2, P1, K2, P2 arrangement that works over a 7 stitch repeat.  When I thought I was going to save the world with seed stitch mitts, an odd number of stitches for the rib was perfect because then you have a center stitch to plan around, you know?

I do think that I left off the ribbing too soon anyways and I believe I’ll carry it on for at least another couple of inches.  I can always do purl diamonds on the ribs - or some other design.  The diameter is a bit loose as it’s currently being worked - perhaps a cable or two would be something to think about.

Oh - and I got back to the living room this morning after having taken the above pictures, and what jumps out at me?

The ball on the left is Lionbrand Magic Stripes.  Doesn’t the purple component seem to match the KnitPicks Iris?  Hmmm… This gives me ideas - but then, doesn’t everything?

We had a lovely, quiet Christmas.  Myria cooked a feast that started with a baked ham, all sweet, smoky tenderness - and it just got better from there!  I gave her perfume; she gave me yarn - we were both happy :)

I have been thinking about an afghans (or a couple of them) for quite a while now.  What has stopped me is the fact that I don’t tend to do well with big projects.  Once I’ve figured out the pattern I get bored.  Well, I finally realized that my burgeoning stash was beginning getting a bit out of control (I even have some yarn in the kitchen) and that one storage area contained nothing but Red Heart Supersaver yarn.  Old Red Heart that I had purchased 6 or 7 years ago for - guess what?  Afghans!  And it occurred to me that if I could use up that stash of yarn, I could clear quite a bit of storage space and have a new blanket into the bargain!

So I looked around for a while and finally settled on Priscilla Hewitt’s beautiful, crocheted Skipping Stones Circular Afghan.  I really liked the pattern but worried that a round afghan might not be so useful.  However, Myria seemed to think it was a pretty cool idea and that the shape would make it all the easier to wrap up in - so off I went.

I went through my various storage areas and found that my Red Heart acrylic seemed to divide itself evenly into pink/rose/wine shades and random colors.  Well, okay - maybe there’ll have to be two afghans to use this stuff up.  I gathered all the pink/rose/wine stuff and went to work. As the pattern specified a double strand of yarn and a large hook, I figured this wouldn’t take any time :)

Now, see in the pattern where it says “hook size N”? I thought that was ridiculous and started with a size K hook instead.  I should have known something was wrong when I read in the pattern that rows 1, 2 and 3 should give me a piece about 3” in diameter.  What I had wasn’t even close.  Never the less, I persevered until I had a round piece that was...erm...pretty dense.  Thermonuclearly dense.  It could stand up by itself and I’m pretty sure it was bullet proof.  Sigh…

So I took it all out and started over again with the recommended hook.  That hook took a while to get used to as I’ve never worked with anything quite that size before (honestly, I’m happiest in the F - H range).  For a while I had to do every treble twice - once to screw up and once for real - until I got the hang of manipulating the size N hook from hell!  Nah, it wasn’t that bad - just a matter of adjustment.

At 11:36 PM, New Year’s Eve, this is what I had…

I messed with the pattern to the extent that I used multiple colors instead of only one, and I added another section to the afghan to make sure it would be big enough to be used as a blanket and to wrap up in.  Those last seven rows had almost 1000 stitches in them and took a looooooooong time to do :) The afghan took about 15 7-8 oz. skeins of yarn and is approximately 73” in diameter.





Of course there’s one more thing to tell you about this blanket.  I realized that I wasn’t going to have enough of the claret color to keep the color range consistent.  ACK!  So I had to go and buy more yarn for the project that was supposed to be using up stash yarn.  The Universe will have it’s little laughs :)





I also received my Black Water Abbey color card in the mail.  Beautiful colors, strong, hard-finished yarn for outer garments or penitents :) There are two remarkable things about this color card - first, it’s free.  That, all by itself, warrants recognition.  The second thing is that it arrived in my mailbox about 2 days after I’d requested it!  I’m used to ordering something and then forgetting all about it because it takes so long to get to me.  Not this!  I’ll probably be looking into ordering a bit of this later on in the year - just to see how it works up.

Happy New Year, everyone!