Two Tuesdays a month I’m at the hospital for tests and treatments.  Today was one of those Tuesdays.  Also, as the weather predictions for this area have been moderately dire, I needed to shop just in case we got stuck indoors for a few days.  And I needed to get to the bank…

And, I figured I’d stop by my Dad’s house.  I generally visit on Wednesday or Thursday but given the weather ‘o doom notices, I thought I’d better get over there today...since I was out.  I see Dad a couple of times a week; I like to keep an eye on him - he is 80, after all, though in astoundingly good shape for a man his age.  I can’t really do it more often, as he is an incredibly independent cuss (something I quite understand as I inherited the characteristic) and he would get testy if he thought I didn’t feel he was entirely and perfectly capable of...well...anything :)

So I was out running around most of the day and didn’t get to the blog thing until just now.

No, there aren’t any pictures.

I’ve gotten a good bit more done on the Kimono and a fair bit more done on the poncho.  More about that on Thursday.

Tomorrow we’ll return to the mineral world in small :) Lots of pictures!

I thought I’d do my Monday post now rather than wait till morning.  See, I am hoping to sleep in tomorrow morning and if the back of my head knows I have a blog post to do, it’ll never let me rest.

Healthwise, things have been a bit rocky this weekend here at casa de wolfandturtle :) Myria is still wheezing and coughing and I have been having similar problems.  We’ve apparently picked up a respiratory virus (all in the family, right?) that seems to just love us.  Neither of us has been sleeping well.  To be fair, neither of us thinks this is anything serious - it’s just incredibly annoying and seems to be gleefully bent on making us as miserable as it can before our immune systems toss it out on its RNA.  Feh…

Got a bit more done on the sweater - but just a bit.  I’m not a speed knitter under the best of circumstances and this weekend the needles seemed to weigh an awful lot :) But I had to do some work on it and things are progressing.  In fact, I’m pleased with how well things are progressing so I’m not going to beat myself up for not getting this front piece finished.  We’ll get there.





Remember this stuff?  I wrote about it back in November when I first attempted to work it up.  This is the most beautiful yarn I have ever seen and felt.  It is soft and luxurious to the touch and the colors are absolutely radiant; they practically glow! 

Working with it is a whole ‘nother story.  It manages to be both slippery and sticky.  Is that one of the ordinary properties of rayon?  The yarn blithely slides around/over/off any needle I’ve tried to work it on, though the Clover bamboos in the picture have given the best result.  I’m not sure how such a seemingly friction-free fiber manages to be sticky at the same time, but just try to frog this stuff.  I’ve had better luck frogging mohair and, as my mother would have said, that stuff sticks like sh*t to a blanket.  The rayon is also totally inelastic - no stretch to the stuff at all.  But don’t think it’s like working with cotton - with cotton, you can at least tug on the yarn and the stitches (if need be) to get them where you want them.  Know what happens when you tug on a piece of this yarn?  You wind up with two pieces of yarn :)

Sigh…

Anyway, when I first saw this chenille, I fell head-over-heels in love with it and purchased two hanks.  Very shortly after I tried working with it for the first time, I knew the affair was over and it has been sitting in my stash cabinet for the last few months.  Finally I decided that it had cost too much for me to just let it go so I dug it out yesterday and began this simple scarf/stole thingy.  I can’t say that I’ve actually wrestled it into submission, but we seem to have reached an armed truce.  This is intended to go with my brown velvet for formal evenings on my next trip in March.  Whether it will get any use after that is highly doubtful.  Sadly, while I now know that it’s true nature is of the vilest guttersnipe sort, it still looks, to me, like the angel of dawn.

Myria’s amaryllis blossomed for us this weekend and it’s beautiful!  One bloom was fully opened by Saturday evening and the second has been opening today.  The third will probably start opening up sometime tomorrow.  It has been a real treat to watch this flower grow.  Anybody know if it’s possible to store the bulb so we can do this again at some future point?





Finally, the twin terrorists have calmed down enough so that they aren’t constantly following me around.  Everything’s relative though, Fuffy (on the right) jumps on me the minute I wake up in the morning.  I’m not sure how he knows I’m awake, but my current theory is that he can hear my eyes opening…

Well, this is going to be one of those days.  Neither of us is feeling up to snuff having acquired some kind of bug over the last couple of days.  Poor Myria is wheezing like a ruptured accordion and I’m at the stage where I’m perfectly amazed by how much grody stuff you can have in your nose and still be able to breathe…

Anyway…

I got a bit more done on the kimono sweater last night, finished the seed stitch and moved on to the stockinette.  Unfortunately, I didn’t remember to switch from the size 6 needles (for the seed st) to the size 8s (for the stockinette) which resulted in frogging.  But it was only a couple of rows plus a few stitches.  Thank goodness I remembered before I had gotten half the piece done!

Yesterday, Ryan asked what colors I was going to do the front/neck band in.  When I bought the yarn for this sweater, I took advantage of a sale on this color only and made sure I ordered enough to do the whole sweater.  I figured doing the band in the same color as the body would be maybe slightly less interesting, but would make for a more versatile garment over all.  Ryan’s comment got me thinking though.  I probably can’t afford to part with the money another three colors would cost (it would amount to half of what I spent for the original 18 balls).  But if I have enough left over after the body and sleeves are completed, I might try dying the remainder.  I have been wanting to try the kool-aid technique anyway and this might yield some interesting results.  That decision is a ways away yet, but it glimmers with possibility in my mind :)

I also started this hat last night.  The idea and pattern came from Pam at Fibre Frenzy.  I’ve never been much of a hat wearer but, given the average temps here in New England this winter, I should be wearing one - otherwise I get earaches :(.  This looked interesting and so I decided to have a go at it.  I’m still debating whether to switch off colors every now and again; I think I’m going to do it.  It will add some funk and just be more fun - both to make and to wear :)

Off topic note:  I set up “Space Cowboys” to run on my laptop while I was working on the hat last night.  Great, fun film.  The plot is slender, but Eastwood, Garner, Sutherland and Jones worked together as though they had always worked together.  Definitely worth seeing - a couple of times :)

This is an amaryllis that Myria got before Christmas.  It’s been growing on the kitchen table (the kitchen has the best light in the apartment) and is about to flower.  It’s been interesting to watch it’s progress as it grows very quickly and has to be turned each day to avoid acquiring a permanent lean towards the window.  I’ll post another picture when the flowers have opened up.  We were only expecting one bloom but, as you can see, we’re going to get three!  Cool beans!

Stay warm, stay happy and stay creative!  Have a great weekend folks!

I cast on for the other front-side of the kimono sweater last night.  Managed to get most of the seed stitch done.  I have to check it against the already completed front piece, but was too lazy to pull it out last night :) If there’s any more to do, it’ll only be a couple of rows at most.  As I’ve said before, I love the way seed stitch looks, but am not thrilled with the working of it.

My luggage finally arrived (delivered by the airport) at 11:45 PM, Sunday night.  Luckily we were still up but that’s a hell of a time to be delivering bags!  When I opened the suitcase the next day to unpack, I could see that it had been gone through.  Fair enough - it hadn’t gotten through customs in Costa Rica which is why it never got on the plane in the first place.  I had finished Myria’s replacement eyelash scarf during my trip and when I packed, I had placed it on top of everything else.  When I opened the bag to unpack, it wasn’t there.

Instant panic…

Fortunately, Myria found it, tucked in between a few other things where it couldn’t be immediately seen.  She wore it yesterday with her smashing fuschia sweater (which I did not knit).

Gorgeous combination!  She got comments on it too, from an elderly woman who wanted one just like it :)

These are the yarns that I mentioned on Monday.

I have pretty much decided that I don’t want to do another diagonal short-row scarf, though that would showcase the yarns beautifully.  But I really do want to put these babies together.  Any ideas?  I’ve got lots of the Phildar chenille (the one at the top), two balls of the Binario railroad (bottom right) and two balls of the fun fur - though I could get more of that.  I would be really interested to know how you all might see this stuff working up - to see it through your eyes, sort of :)

Ryan (of Mossy Cottage fame) offered this URL in a comment the other day.  Go and take a look.  The cable in the featured sweater were created with the help of dice.  Tossing the die determined when the cables were twisted.  I would have thought that the amount of randomness in this exercise would make a chaotic and unattractive garment - and I would have been wrong.  It’s a very intriguing idea and definitely worth playing with!

The Dos Amigos haven’t left me alone since I got home.

Fluffy (the one on the left), especially seems to feel that I owe him every waking moment and both hands for the forseeable future.  And that’s okay for now because I missed him too and am still susceptible to his guilt-making tactics.  Next week I’ll feel differently but for now, I happy to cuddle on demand :)

I have been working on the poncho too but I’ll wait until I’ve started the increases and have something different to show you to post another picture.  It’s coming along well though and is simple, simple to work as it’s just knitting around and around and around.  Makes really good TV knitting :)

I hope you’re all having a great day.  The weekend’s approaching - have faith!

Before I was a knitter, I was a beader.  In many ways, the attractions were similar - beading is a hand craft; it involves lots of wonderful colors and can be used to create many beautiful effects.  I have a huge storage bin full of beads and beading paraphenalia that has been encroaching on my thoughts more and more these days.  I’m going to have to get down to the basement sometime soon and do some serious prowling around in that bin. 

The notion of combining the beading with the knitting has also planted itself in my fervid little imagination and I need to let that simmer awhile before I can tell if anything interesting will come of it.

In general, beading is the process of linking beads together with needle and thread in various ways to create various patterns and effects.  About.com has a pretty good beading section and there are many resources on the web that teach the particulars of various methods: peyote, brick, square and looming.  These are the basic stitches.

The wolf head here was done in square stitch and graced the front of my work computer for years.  The pawprint was done in two-drop peyote stitch.  As Myria mentioned in her Wednesday post two weeks ago, wolf is one of my totem animals so it’s something I often represent in my crafts.  Wolf is a teacher and, as I often see my life as a long process of lessons, it seems a most appropriate symbol.





The Green Man was one of the first loom pieces I did and remains one of my favorites.  He is associated with Celtic mythology (though this may not be entirely accurate) and with nature and green, growing things.  To me he represents the beauty and the wild unpredictability of nature. 

This piece was done with translucent beads and is meant to be hung in a window so the sun can shine through it, highlighting the colors.  It has been in a cedar box on my dresser for quite a while now and I’m thinking it’s about time I put him back into the sunshine where he belongs.

Aside of decoration, beading has practical purposes as well.  I don’t wear a watch often - makes me feel like I’m chained to a clock.  But, sometimes, there’s no alternative so I do own a watch that I wear once in a while.  The bracelet is done in square stitch (which is extrememely sturdy and so a good stitch for something that gets vigorous wear).





Of course, beading can be - and most often is - used for jewelry.  I find something enormously appealing in the idea of making my own jewelry.  It’s more personal and represents something besides adornment.  It is also great fun as you can work with colors tailored to your wardrobe and customize as you like.

The above necklace is strung, not stitched, but it is beading all the same.  The strand is composed of pearl and mother-of-pearl and the large trio at the bottom are amber.  The earrings, made in a traditional Native American style are glass beads and citrine quartz.  I like these earrings on grey, nasty days because they are so sunny and cheering.

The above assortment are all pieces I wear frequently.  The white ones in the upper left I think of as my winter solstice earrings because that’s when I made them and the colors were chosen for their reflections of snow and ice.  These were done, mostly, in brick stitch and the dangles are terminated with black pearl and hematite.

The pair below them are made from iridescent beads, blue-dyed pearls and sterling charms - wolf and moon.  Also mostly brick stitch.

The pair on the right use materials I don’t usually find attractive but, somehow, the combination worked for me.  The faceted beads are red tiger-eye (an iron component is what changes the color from the usual yellow-brown to red).  I was fascinated with the idea of faceting an opaque stone.  This was the first time I had run into it and I thought it worked very well.  The lighter pieces are lace agate.  These beads were strung on a silver pin, the end of which was bent into a loop to attach to the earring hook.

Most cultures have beading traditions.  While the ones we often employ here in the states are related to Native American design, there are many others.  The design for this necklace is Russian and is worked along the length in two passes.  It is surprisingly light weight.  The technique is simple and, depending on the beads, can produce a necklace that is totally funky or sleekly elegant.

The earrings are mother-of-pearl and carnelian and are a seat-of-the-pants design :)

This is a beading loom.  It is strung with thread and the beads are attached by weaving them between the threads.  This can produce some amazing effects but it is not a very sturdy technique.  For this reason, loomed work is usually attached to a backing of some sort to give it a little more strength.

The piece on the loom is a portion of Picasso’s “Don Quixote” that I had adapted as a beading pattern.

Beads come in all shapes and sizes.  There are the ordinary seed beads that you can find at Wal-Mart.  They’re fine for stringing but unsuitable for weaving because of their size variations.  There are the Japanese “delicas” which more resemble tiny, colored tubes and come in every color of the rainbow - and probably a few more than that :) These are wonderful to work with because their sizes are so uniform.  There are beads as big as your thumb and as small as a grain of salt and beads are made out of every material imaginable.  Most are glass, but there are amber, precious stone, bone and horn beads as well, not to mention wood, gold and silver.

I really have to think seriously about getting back into this.  As I’ve typed this post, I’ve been remembering what fun the process was and how much I enjoyed the whole thing.  I never intended to abandon it - but you know how it is when another notion (knitting) comes along and knocks you upside the head - for a while, it’s all you can think of!

Well, I guess that’s not entirely accurate.  You think of dragons as being somewhat difficult to deal with and this sweater has been very simple so far.  But it is a kimono-type style and the Orient has many dragon associations...I know - more than you wanted to know :)

This is one of the fronts of the sweater.  A 28 inch overall length is what the pattern stipulates.  When I arrived at 28 inches, I held the piece up to see how it would fall on my body.  Right - the seed stitch border hung mid-lump, emphasizing and enhancing.

Nonononoooooo…

I sat down and did some calculations to see if I had enough yarn to increase the length by a couple of inches.  I did.  So I continued to knit until I had a length of 30”.  Check that in the mirror...ahhhhh!  Lumpiness covered - much better!

The directions say to cast on 72 stitches and work two inches in seed stitch before completing the rest of the length of the piece in stockinette.  I cast on 73 stitches so that each row would start the same way (ie: K1, P1, etc...).  On 72 stitches the rows would have alternated between K1, P1… and P1, K1.  A more astute individual than me might not have any trouble with this.  But when you’re inclined to be absent-minded, this is a recipe for unwanted ribbing.  Casting on that extra stitch saved me from all kinds of unwanted frogging, tinking and cussing.





A method note.

I had tried the Bella sweater from Knitty which is started the same way and had no end of trouble with the seed stitch border folding up along the bottom of the garment.  I tried everything I could think of to get it to lie flat and had zero luck.  The Bella pattern uses the same size needles throughout - both for the border and for the body of the garment.  The kimono pattern has you do the seed stitch on size 6 needles and then switches to size 8 needles for the stockinette part. 

Guess what - no folding up problems!  It’s border lies nice and flat and is a border - instead of a textured cuff.  I really like the Bella sweater and am going to give it another try using a smaller needle on the seed stitch to see if it makes a difference on that pattern.

Back to the kimono…

The Tahki New Tweed is really nice yarn to work with (spit splices nicely too!), smooth and not the least but rough on the fingers.  I keep holding the fabric up to my cheek because it feels so nice and non-scratchy.  My father, a textile designer for most of his working life, says the fabric has a nice “hand”.

This is a pair of juncos that showed up yesterday afternoon.  We finally figured out that they’re ground feeders, not “feeder” feeders, if you know what I mean.  Throwing some seed directly onto the porch roof makes them happy and we’ve had as many as 8 at a time.  They seem to travel strictly in pairs; even if you can only see one, there’s another lurking around the vicinity somewhere.  These guys are a little smaller than sparrows and more sleekly designed.

Hope your week is going well and that you’re staying warm!

Well, I finally made it home.  Having been in transit from 8:00 AM on Saturday to 4:00 AM on Sunday, I had some doubts that I would ever make it back.  It began to feel like a Sisyphus thing, you know?  You’re almost there and then something else happens and you’re thwarted again.  Eventually I did make it through my own front door - sans luggage, though.  Due to a customs error, it was all (save my carry-on) still languishing in Costa Rica.  Eh - the airport delivered it, finally, at 11:45 last night - so the luggage got a bit more vacation than I did :)

My profound thanks to Myria for her beautiful and excellent posts in my absence - a round of applause, please?  Don’t know what I’d do without her :)

I don’t intend this to be a “cruise” entry, but I will mention a couple of things. 

For the beginning of the trip, the moon was full and my stateroom had a perfect view of it.

This was taken just as we were pulling out of Ft. Lauderdale.

I have always loved the moon, a typically female reaction, I suppose, according to myth and lore.  I highly recommend it (and a couple of identifiable constellations - Orion is what I always look for) as a traveling companion.  It lends a sense of grounding.  You may be on the other side of the earth from your home, but the moon is there, just as it ordinarily is, so you’re not lost.

The night skies are truly splendid at sea because there’s no ambient light to get in the way.  On a cloudless night, there’s no perceptible division between the sky and the sea and the stars are just amazing.  I don’t know the last time I saw Orion shine with such splendor.  We even got close enough to the equator for me to pick out the Southern Cross!

The other thing I wanted to mention is the food.  There’s a joke about how you get onto a cruise ship as a passenger but you leave as cargo. It’s reference to the weight you’re apt to acquire as a result of the splendid and unabashedly rich cuisine most cruise ships serve.  I don’t think I smuggled off many more pounds than I boarded with, but it wasn’t thanks to any of this:

See that line of stuff in the center, the croissants?  I practically lived on the things.  They are just about the most perfect bread form, in my opinion, and I can’t get enough of them.  Fortunately, at home, there’s expense to consider and that works to keep me in check most of the time.  I can get English muffins, a dozen for $1.00 around here.  But a half dozen croissants will run $3.00 or more.  On board a ship though, it’s a different story.  As the food is part of the price of the trip, I can indulge in as many as I want, as often as I want.  I got into the habit of smuggling a couple of the crisp, buttery darlings (along with a bit of fresh pineapple or strawberries) into my stateroom to have as a midnight snack.  Heavenly!

Caviar?  Overrated :)

Knitting Knews

I did get my kimono cardigan started and have finished one front.  It is still packed, however, so more about that tomorrow.

I also worked on this…

...in airports, in transit and when I was bored with the cardigan.  As you can see, it’s grown some and in another few inches, I will be ready to start the increases for the body.  I’m thinking about doing some ribbing for an inch or so at the neck to kind of snug it up at that point...any suggestions?

I had brought a bag of fun yarn with me and looking through it one night, realized that I had the makings of a gorgeous and fancy scarf/stole sort of thing.  Some periwinkle Phildar DK chenille, a couple of balls of Binario railroad type stuff in blues and lavenders and a ball of deep blue-violet Fun Fur.  As I sat gazing at these gorgeous colors it occurred to me that the perfect showcase for them would be the Multidirectional Diagonal Scarf (see post for 12/21/03 in the old site archives).  The chenille and railroad yarns would be paired for one set of trangles and the fun fur would be used for the opposing triangles.  It would be gorgeous!

I ran to the laptop and pulled up all my stored knitting patterns.

It wasn’t there!!!

Oh well… Now that I’m home, the urge has passed somewhat, but I may still try to put it together.  I have another trip coming up in March and would like to make something a little fancy fot it.  I’m ambivalent about it and though I deeply appreciate my father’s desire to share his cruising passion with me, it’s always a seriously mixed blessing.  I’ll talk more about this some other time.  The March trip should be the last one and that suits me just fine.

Can I just tell you how much I missed you all, missed the blogging - both the doing and the reading?  Internet access is available on board the ship, but it costs $30 per day for three hours of access.  I simply couldn’t afford that.  So I’m really glad to be home and back posting.

Tomorrow, the tale of the kimono cardigan!