Mmm, fiber...

So a couple of weeks ago, I read an article in the local paper about a fiber arts group that usually meets once a month at the Farm Museum, just minutes from my house.  How did I live here for two and a half years and not know about these people?  The article also said that this month, they were meeting at the Library downtown.  Maybe an outreach effort, maybe just that it has been a cold winter and many of the Farm Museum spaces are un- or underheated.  Anyway, off I went to the Library at the appointed time.

The group was terrific!  About half spinners, but also several knitters and afficionados of the "c" word.  One woman who has a few alpaca but does not spin brought several bags of fleece and enticed the spinners by saying that if they would spin it for her, they could keep half.  One of the fleeces was from a black alpaca/llama mix (she said), and the fleece was soooooo heavenly.  I was tempted to take up spinning.  The best part was that it was just a big group of people sitting together, working with yarn and fiber, and chatting about this interest we all had in common.  I am so hooked.

Here are a couple of pictures I got in the email the next day:

Look!  I was really there!

Another neat event was that I met another knitter there who was pining for a knitting group.  She had learned to knit at work, but then the person who organized the knitting group left and the group broke up.  She kept knitting on her own, but she was sad and wished for others to knit with.  When she saw me knitting, she asked me to help her with a mistake in her project, so we got to talking and she told me her tale.  Well, what else was I to do but invite her to my knitting group at school?  She came the following week, then was sick this week, but she did email me to let me know why she wasn't there.  I hope she becomes a regular.  She seemed very nice.

As for my own projects, it's still the Lion Suede.  Both arms are done up to the join with the body.  Then I cast on the body (managed to reconstruct how to do that fancy braid cast-on) and I have knitted up about 6".  On me, that's about half the way to the underarm.  I'm doing the cabling we designed for the front, where each side has a cable at the front edge that's half rust and half purple, and the two sides twist is opposite directions.  It's looking very nice.  The yarn is still hard to work, so I knit until my fingers get tired and then stop, and it's taking a long time.  But I still like the way it looks, so I will finish it eventually.

They're Baaaack

Slow days are over for a while.  It's the first day of Spring semester, and they're all back.  And needing something, it seems, though I'm sure that isn't really true.  These are the days when my evening knitting really saves my sanity.

The program these days includes the Lion Suede sweater jacket and a pair of socks.  The dog sweater is all knitted up, just needs to be blocked and then tried on the dog for correct placement of buttons to make it fit just right.  I do so hate blocking.  I hope I get this done before the winter is over.  I already feel a little bad because we are currently having a spell of about the coldest weather we get, lows in single digits highs in the 20's, and this is when the dog really could use the sweater.  But, it is what it is, I'll just need to get my rear in gear before the next cold snap.

The Lion Suede sweater progresses.  I'm probably 3/4 of the way up the sleeves.  I started with the sleeves and I'm knitting both at the same time.  It's not the most fun yarn to knit.  It has no stretch, and I'm knitting it on the tight side because I like the result, which makes it hard on the hands in a funny way.  I just can't do too much of it at one time.

The socks are the current traveling project which lives in my purse and mainly comes out at knitting group.  Usually I stick to the most basic pattern for traveling socks, just a simple rib, so I can chat and knit at the same time.  This time, though, I was so eager to try something out of my new sock pattern book, I am doing a lace pattern on the traveling socks.  Rather risky.  The saving grace is that this pattern alternates lace and stockinette, so I figure if I muck up the lace too badly I can rip it back to the last stockinette stretch and start over.  The pattern has a safety net. 

Okay, back to work.  Thanks for the break!

3 days till Christmas and they've all gone home.

Can you tell it's a slow day at work?  Went to the new iHop for lunch (with workmates, to celebrate holidays), then spent some time photographing my latest socks using the built-in camera on the Mac on my desk.  That was fun.  Glad no one came in in the middle.

Anyway, here it is at last....  The color work sock made at the NSKO.  Hope you like it!

Rip it

Last night was a frogging night.  I knit up a good 6 inches on the sleeves of the Suede sweater, then got a nagging suspicion that I was not increasing fast enough to taper the sleeves up.  Although I was mightily tempted to just continue on and hope for the best, in my heart of hearts I knew this was the old me talking, the one who never made a sweater that fit in her life.  Firm in my resolution not to be that knitter any more, I put one of the sleeves on a string, took it off the needles, and tried it on.  Sure enough, halfway from the wrist to the elbow it became totally snug.  Not large enough.

So, I ripped it back.  Not all the way, the first 3 inches or so were okay,  but I ripped out all I had done last night.  It hurt.  But I keep thinking of how good it will feel when I finish the sweater and it fits.  Patience, knitters, patience.

A mixed bag

By popular acclaim (thanks, blonde knitter), I have started the Lion Suede sweater jacket.  A bit of advice: when someone shows you a cool new technique and you want to use it, don't wait a month to do it.  Fortunately, I still had the sample I knitted at the NSKO.  After 4 tries I finally managed to do it right and was able to cast on.

In my defense, the sample was knit flat, and the cast on was in the round.  So I did have to adapt the original instructions a little.  But my basic mistake had nothing to do with that, so it doesn't really excuse me.

Anyway, I decided to knit the sleeves first and to knit them both at the same time, so I now have them cast on, the first two rows knitted (the cool braided looking pattern K1Frog2 taught me) and also a couple plain rows to lock it all into place.  I stopped there because I have to take some measurements and decide on the increase pattern so the sleeves can taper properly.  I'm knitting the sleeves first because I'm making the pattern up as I go along.  The length of the body will be determined mainly by how far the yarn I have will go, so I figured get the sleeves out of the way and then I'll know how much yarn I really have for the body.

On a different note, more sock sadness, but also some gladness.  The pair of socks I knit on our vacation last summer became a single sock somewhere along the way.  For a couple of months now, the single sock has languished, hanging over the edge of my sock box waiting for its mate to reappear.  Finally, it did.  In the yard.  Under the clothesline.  Where it has lain for lo these past months since it got too cold to hang laundry out and have it dry in a reasonable time.  Peter discovered it while bringing in the clothespins for the winter.  Do you know what happens when dyed wool lays out in the sun for a couple of months?  Yes!  It fades!  Now imagine a sock which has lain in the sun with one side up and the other side down for all that time.  It is a very interesting two-tone sock now.  However, I have determined to go ahead and wear it.  I only wore these once or twice, I want to wear them more.  Just not anyplace where appearance really matters.  

Starting Again

I am happy to report that my mother-in-law is back home and stable now.  They don't call her the come-back kid for nothing.  The cardiac socks are almost done, just need to bind them off.  The yarn is a hand-dyed Peruvian wool in shades of brown/terra cotta/black which was a gift from my sister-in-law a while back.  It's a little heavier than most sock weight, but not much, so I knit it up on the same needles I always use.  The size is fine, and the socks are just a little extra heavy and warm.  With the wintry temperatures we're having this week, I'm happy to have them.  Okay, wintry for Maryland, I know you Chicago types would laugh at this. 

Sock sadness over the weekend.  I put on a pair of lacy socks I knit in a self-striping yarn, and discovered a big hole in them!  Yarn breakage, moths, don't know why, but it looks like some of the yarn gave way and then it unraveled a bit.  I think I'm going to try darning them.  I really like these socks, the combination of the lacy pattern and the stripes did some really cool looking things.  The stripes became waves, and as the socks were washed the yarn felted a bit so the lace pattern is more of a visual texture now.  So they are textured with funky wavy stripes.  I love it.

And now I face the new project dilemma again.  Will the next project be the Lion Suede sweater jacket we all helped design at the NSKO?  I'm quite excited about the design, I think it will be fun to make.  Or will it be the gloves I'm dying to try?  On the NSKO trip to the yarn shop, I bought a book because it has good, basic instructions for knitting gloves, which I am eager to try.  I also bought some blue/green speckled sock yarn, and when I got home I realized it's the perfect colors to go with my berber fleece jacket that I wear in spring and fall.  So now I am dying to knit a pair of gloves with this yarn to go with the jacket.  Decisions, decisions!

Of course, neither project is a good traveling project, so there will also be another pair of socks started soon.  I have picked out a variegated yarn in muted sunset colors, yellow to peach to salmon sort of shades. 

Cardiac knitting

Still basking in the afterglow of the North Shore Knit Out.  Thanks for everything, ladies, it was an amazing weekend!  A real break from everything, and great to see you both again! 

When I got home I launched immediately into the preparations for Thanksgiving, since we had the whole family (10 people in all) up to our house for the big day.  A nice time, and a nice meal, if I say so myself.

Unfortunately, the afterglow of that was dampened by Peter's mom going to the hospital at 5am Friday morning with chest pains.  They say she did have some sort of cardiac event (not the first time).  Once she was stable and they determined that inserting a stent was not an option (almost killed her last time they tried), they let her go home.  That was Tuesday afternoon.  So she's home, she's happy, Peter's sister is taking leave from work to take care of her, no one quite knows what to expect.  On the bright side, I got a lot of knitting done last weekend, too.

I finished the Fair Isle socks I worked on at the NSKO.  While I was working them I had serious doubts about my color choices, especially the purple, but once I put that final band of the burgundy tweed at the top of the whole thing, it really pulled it all together.  I am happy with them.  The tension seems fine, I did not have trouble wearing them or getting them on and off.  No undue trouble about snagging the yarns being carried on the wrong side.  Some of those carries were a bit long, I was a little worried about that.  I don't quite know what, if anything, to do with all the ends from the color changes.  I may just ignore them and hope they felt up and stick to the inside of the sock eventually.  I just washed them for the first time, I ought to inspect them and see whether that sounds plausible.

Finished those up on the day after Thanksgiving, while I was waiting at home to find out what was happening with Peter's mom.  By the end of the day she was stable and we knew she'd be in for a while, so I started a plain pair of self-striping socks to work on in the waiting room.  Sure enough, spent large parts of Saturday and Sunday in the hospital waiting room, mostly watching stuff while Peter and his brother and sister took turns visiting mom in the critical care unit, talking to doctors, etc.  It was important for me to be there, but I'm also really happy I have a hobby that is portable and can keep me occupied for hours.