The last post of 2007!

I relaxed last week and didn’t push too much :) Just kind of felt like taking it easy, so I watched a lot of movies, read a couple books and didn’t worry about the weather.  But I didn’t neglect the knitting entirely either!

Or the dyeing, as it turned out :)

The last time I had to clean the snow off the car, my fingertips froze.  Really.  It was annoying and painful and I took it as a sign from the knitting gods that I needed a new pair of mittens.  I wanted them to be dense and warm.  What makes dense warm mittens?  Bulky wool, of course :) And I had the gorgeous Rapunzel just waiting for a project.  So I set out in search of a pattern.

I haven’t had enough experience with mittens to be terribly comfortable fooling around with decorative ideas yet, so I was looking for a plain design, worked in the round with bulky yarn.  I found more patterns that I would ever have imagined for two needle mittens.  I found a plethora of patterns for toddlers and children and lots of good plain patterns for adults in worsted weight as well as some patterns that I can only describe as high art done in stranded knitting and Fair Isle.  Gorgeous things that I would be terrified to wear even if I could manage the knitting.  There were also a fair number that gave a child sized pattern with instructions to go up a needle size for each size larger mitten you wanted to knit.  Honestly, the needle size I would need to make the child sized mittens fit my large paws would result in lace.  And lace, lovely as it is, is not well suited to mittens - the cold-weather kind anyway…

Finally I landed on Janice Farrell Pea’s Easy Peasy Mitten Pattern.  Bulky yarn?  Check!  Plain and simple? Check!  The only drawback for anyone else making this is that there’s only one size - and it makes a big mitten.  This was perfect for me as I have big hands but could be an issue for someone else.

We got more snow last night (in fact we’ve had more snow this December than we got through the entirety of the last winter season) so I was hoping to test them this morning when we went out to clean the car off before going shopping.  Unfortunately, the temps were in the high 30s so the snow was melting anyways and the car was cleaned off in about 40 seconds flat.  Mittens never even got damp :) Given the track record here in the northeast this winter though, I don’t doubt I shall eventually have ample opportunity to see how warm they keep my fingers.

I have also been dyeing - more in the last couple of weeks than I’ve done in quite a while.

See this?

The yarn on the left is Knitpicks Peruvian Highland wool in fingering weight.  The yarn on the right is Nomis Wolle, worsted weight.  Both are natural wools and neither have been previously dyed.  The Nomis is darker than the Knitpicks and has a slightly yellow (or tan?) cast to it.  The Knitpicks is might lighter and brighter - not white, but approaching it.

I knew they were different colors going in but I wanted to use them together to approximate a bulky weight yarn and, truth be told, I also want to see what the differences would be if they were dyed together - same pot, same dye bath.

I used the same proportions and the same dyes that I had for Come Sail Away.  The Nomis worsted came close to the results I got with the earlier dye job.  Violets, blue-violets and a few pinks here and there.  The Knitpicks came out differently - blues and blue-greens mostly.  It was fascinating to see the differences in each of the yarns.

Of course they’re being used together:

This is the first panel for my blanket.  I had like this design so much in my aunt’s scarf that I decided to use it again.  I did expand it a bit; this is about 11” wide and will acquire some embroidered accents when it is finished.  I have no idea what the other panels will be yet, whether I’ll repeat this pattern or find or dream up something else.  I can tell you there’s been more dyeing going on - but save that for later :)

I’d like to thank all of you who come to read, comment and chat.  From the bottom of my heart, I wish you all a warm and happy new year!

See the “Knitting Chatter” button on the side bar for more information.

Last Chatters of 2007!  Stop by and have a cup for auld lang syne :)

See the “Knitting Chatter” button on the side bar for more information.

Bring your knitting and come and join the discussion/s.  The more the merrier :)

I got my scarves finished!  I know my relief at having them done is somewhat overblown but I can’t help it.  Last minute things and deadlines wreak havoc with my peace of mind and always have :) I won’t bore you with the uncle scarf because, except for length, it isn’t any different that it was when you last saw it :) But the aunt scarf came out differently than I expected.

I like it :)

The original scarf had embroidered flowers in the center of the diamond lozenges and I had intended to do that as it’s a very pretty treatment.  But the more I thought about what the back would look like, the less I liked the idea.  The red design lines are crocheted - well, I suppose embroidered with a crochet hook might be a more accurate description.  The process is no different than crocheting a long chain except that you’re doing it through a thickness of fabric.  It’s a bit fiddly, but not overly cumbersome and leaves a much neater back side than embroidery would have.  It’s also a little more conservative of your yarn than embroidery would have been.

I was also surprised by a package from the inimitable Bron this week.  There were these…

Stitch markers that read “Robbyn Knits”!  I love them, but I probably won’t knit with them because I’m afraid of breaking them.  So I’m hanging them on the latch to one of my stash cabinets :) It’s at eye level and I will see it all the time.  So cute!

But that wasn’t all…

There were 10 hanks of this - Knitpicks Peruvian highland wool, bulky.  And oh, the colors and designs and plots and plans that have been going through my head ever since!  Yarn to play with - what could possibly be better!  Thank you Bron - for your thoughtfulness and generosity :)

And, of course, I couldn’t resist immediately fooling around with it, and so there’s this too!

The whole skinny is over at the Dyepot - check out Rapunzel.

I won’t be posting Christmas week - but Chatters is on for Saturday night (the 22nd) and will be on for Saturday the 29th as well.  Hope to see you there.

I wish all of you dear people the best and most joyous of holidays, warmth and cheer and the pleasure of family and friends :)

T’is the holiday season and last week dad and I received an invitation to my aunt and uncle’s house for Christmas Eve.  This is dad’s sister and the Christmas Eve thing seems to be becoming something of a tradition.

So I was thinking - you’re supposed to bring something to the host/hostess, aren’t you?  I know it’s supposed to be something like flowers or wine, but I decided to go with something else :)

This one is for my aunt.  The yarn is the rest of the Berocco Ultra Alpaca that I used for Sunset Tiles and the pattern is based on Monika’s Her Scarf (scroll down).  I’m working it on size 8 US (5.00 mm) needles.  I modified the width a bit and will be embroidering in some contrast color when the knitting is done.  I think I will leave it fringeless so as to get maximum scarf length out of the yarn.





This one is for my uncle.  It’s a simple beaded rib done in Chantelaine Goliath bulky on size 9 US (5.5 mm) needles.  It’s a very thick, cushy fabric that I hope will be comfortable and warm.

I’ve been in a semi-panic trying to get these done in time and they are still not finished.  I’ve even been dreaming about it :) Ridiculous, eh?  However, I’m past the halfway point on both items and am reasonably assured that I can have them finished, blocked and ready to go on Christmas Eve.  Hopefully that will put an end to the dreams :)

We are buried in snow up here having gotten hit three times last week.  But I must say it certainly is nice looking.  The neighborhood is a bit shabby - not a bad area, you understand, just a little worn - and the snow dresses it up, gives it a festive air.

Indoors, the cats are enjoying the cold weather.  We don’t allow the apartment to freeze, of course, but the temp doesn’t get much above 65ºF either.  We’re used to this and don’t find it a burden - and the resident felines absolutely adore it.  In fact Jade has decided that midnight is play time and she chases her catnip mouse all over the place.  If I pick up the toy, she immediately sits down and looks exactly the way a dog does when it’s waiting for you to throw a stick - eager and anticipatory.  It’s very funny :)

Goldie has taken to sleeping on the back of my chair which results in his tickling my ear with his tail.  Someday, I’m just going to knit it right into whatever I’m working on and not even notice!

Myria has an interesting theory.  She feels that no matter how much objective time (if there even is such a thing) a life occupies from birth to death, all lifetimes are equal.  It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about mayflies (about a day) or Galapagos tortoises (200-300 years).

We acquired Snap in October of 2005.  She came home to our apartment with another pair of gerbils (Crackle and Pop), just a tiny, white little thing.  Well, they were all tiny and, for a time, all lived together in the same tank.  We were under the impression that they were all sisters from the same litter.  This turned out not to be the case :)

We’d had them about 6 weeks when a late night biting incident showed us that the little silver gerbil probably wasn’t related to the two taupe satins and that she would probably be better off on her own.  So we moved Snap into her own tank, made sure she had plenty of food, hay and fresh water, and provided her with roughly that same amount of cardboard chew toys that the other two (who actually were sisters) got.





You see, Snap was maniacal :) While it might take Crackle and Pop all evening, working in concert, to chew up a pasta box, Snap, working by herself, could shred the thing in about 20 minutes.  She was amazingly industrious, rearranging her living quarters on a daily basis sometimes and always jumping, digging or chewing.  She never seemed to sleep.  Myria and I evolved the theory that she was trying to take over the world (possibly some collective rodent unconscious tendency - either that, or she’d just seen too much Pinky and the Brain) and loved watching to see what Snap would come up with next.





Over the last couple of years, we have watched Snap tirelessly building fairly complicated tunnel systems in her tank, especially when the weather was cold.  Tunnels that led from bed to water bottle and small mountains of bedding and cardboard with holes in the top.  They looked like little volcanoes except instead of smoke, ash and lava, it erupted a gerbil!  The funny thing was, she would put all this time and effort into building something fairly intricate and then just tear it down to re-design it or move it to another corner of the tank.  She was tireless, our gerbil architect, and always seemed to have a new idea to explore and test.

She was, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most driven and energetic gerbils I’ve ever had the opportunity to observe.

But she wasn’t all work.  She had a deep and abiding fondness for slivered almonds and unsalted pumpkin seeds.  One of those in her food bowl would send her into paroxysms of joy and she would whisk the coveted tidbit into a corner where she would turn and face out into the tank.  Then, backside protected, she would grasp the morsel with both forepaws and proceed to nibble it into extinction, tail twitching ever so slightly and eyes-half closed in sheer bliss.

Gerbils in general (most rodents, for that matter) and Snap in particular, have very fast metabolisms.  This sort of arrangement usually means a very, very active, though fairly short, life. There’s an old joke: 

What should you give a gerbil for Christmas? 

A third birthday…

A couple of weeks ago, we began noticing that Snap seemed to be slowing down.  She wasn’t chewing up her toys nearly as quickly and she had been.  In fact she was only partially breaking them down and then abandoning them, leaving oddly sculpted cardboard structures sitting in the middle of the tank.  She wasn’t paying attention to her toilette any more either; her coat was getting dirty and scruffy and she didn’t seem to care.  She began to have difficulty getting around as though her coordination was deserting her and she slept a great deal more than usual.

She left us yesterday afternoon.

As with any pet, I am grateful for the time we had together.  She got a warm home, more than enough food (including items she would never have run across in her native Mongolia - or even at the pet store, for that matter) and materials to manipulate according to her instincts and imagination.  I got to observe the life and times of a gerbil genius and am grateful to have had the opportunity to do so.

A small life is not worth less just because it is small.  And I think I begin to understand what Myria means about all lifetimes being equal.  Each of them - mayfly, gerbil, human, tortoise - is exactly one lifetime long.

See the “Knitting Chatter” button on the side bar for more information.

It’s supposed to be a night unfit for man or beast - at least in New England :) So come sit around the virtual fireplace, bring your knitting and be assured of warmth and friendship. 

Maybe even a few knitting tips!