Reboot

Thank you for all of the comments and feedback on my sweater conundrum.  My final conclusion was that the whole thing was trouble (very precise and technically-oriented, I know), so I ripped out both halves of the edging and started again.  Slowly.  I picked up for the outside facing, and then ran a lifeline through the stitches (which wasn't easy, as these are small stitches, knitted relatively tightly on small needles), so that I'd be able to find them again easily when I went back.  Then I knitted the front facing, put it evenly onto two needles (to keep from squishing all the stitches and making them unmanageable when I went back for the inside facing), and went back to pick up the purl bumps just above the legs of the original stitches (the legs being easy easier to spot now that they were on a lifeline).  That took eons, but it worked.  I should mention that there was also some very careful (and time-consuming) counting (and re-counting) of the 497 stitches on both sets of needles prior to the knitting of the inside facing.  Then I knitted them all together for the three needle bind-off.  That took the better part of all the knitting time I could devote to it last week (about 15 minutes to rip out everything I'd done, and then hours and hours - literally, though I wish I were exaggerating - to get it all done again).  I had that pretty much done by latelate Saturday night, when Older Daughter got home from this:

(Some of you may recognize the signs of prom.)  In fact, much of Saturday was spent on the getting-ready part of prom (getting nails done, for example).  There was even hair-doing.  I'm not much of a girl, really, and you've all seen how short my hair is these days, so that involved going out to actually purchase a hair-dryer and curling iron (!!).  I think Older Daughter was deeply concerned that the curling iron part of things might end up like this, but I finally let her know that I did, in fact, once upon a time own (and even use!) such a thing on myself, and it all turned out OK in the end.

Sunday morning (after coffee and croissants, my requested mother's day treat), Rick and I headed out (leaving prom-exhausted girls behind) to this:

The start of the Amgen Tour of California.  In downtown Escondido.  Where it topped 100 degrees before the race even started at 11:15.  After a quick lunch at home, we went out to the last King of the Mountain points banner to watch the riders come up their last big hill (they'd already climbed Mt. Palomar in the heat, poor guys); it was still over 100 degrees, under 25% humidity, and they looked pretty beat.  We stood in the shade and cheered (we even showed up on the TV coverage, heh).  I love a good stage race - we'll see how this one turns out.

Then home we went, where I finally (finally!!) picked up stitches around the bottom of the sweater, completed an i-cord cast-off around all of those stitches plus the ones still on the needles around the front and hood (it felt amazingly like a walk in the park after the facing debacle), and then did the same thing for the sleeves.  And wove in the ends.  And then this morning, knowing that we were in for another scorcher, I soaked and blocked the sweater before leaving for work.  The sweater is now, of course, quite dry.  All that remains is to put in the zipper.

(Bad picture, but it was that or nothing.)

That, my friends, is a sweater.  Ends woven in, i-cord edging complete.  Ends woven in (have I mentioned how many ends there were in this sweater?).  And double-sided front/hood edging?

Done.

At a total loss

I was going to write a post today about all of the projects that have required re-dos in the last week or so, with the good news that things generally seem to be back on track. But my mental composition came too soon, apparently.

I have been struggling with the finishing work on the Northmavine Hoody, which requires, let me tell you, a LOT of finishing work. Mostly, I have been doing it with good cheer. There was the hood, which required unkitchenering and further knitting (because it was too small), but I did that. And then there were the endless ends to be woven in (four for every eight rows of knitting for the entire sweater, arms, and hood), but last weekend I put many hours into that job and got it done. I kitchenered the underarms. I knitted the pockets. And then it was time to pick up stitches to knit the facing around the fronts and hood edges. I did that. All 500+ stitches, then six rows of knitting. So far so good.

Then it was time to turn to the wrong side and pick up stitches in the purl bumps left by the first round of pick-up-stitch. That was not easy. It was so not-easy, in fact, that I resorted to another option: I turned to the right side, picked up one leg of every knit stitch in the original pick-up row, and then turned everything back around and worked from there. That seemed to work, but knitting the five rows for the inside facing was fiddly, fiddly, fiddly. Partly because it's just long row after long row, and partly because each of those long rows had to be completed while working around the needle that was holding the front facing stitches. And (it must be admitted), partly because I was working with stitches squeezed tightly onto several shorter-than-optimal needles, because I just cannot see buying yet another pair of needles for this project, just to do this one thing (believe me when I say I have, one way or another, already bought an unconscionable number of needles for this project).

But I persevered. Through knitting the two facings, and then through the endless three-needle bind-off to attach them, leaving live stitches that now, in the almost-final stage of finishing, should be available for an i-cord bind-off. Except not.

Because something just is not right, and I haven't a clue why not, and I could really use some help here.

If you look at that first picture, you might be able to see what I'm talking about. See how the stitches look all lovely and straight on the left, and then start biasing increasingly as you go right? The biasing continues about halfway around, and then the stitches mysteriously line up neatly again.

The second photo shows the neatly lined up stitches. And the third, the neatly lined up inside facing stitches. But then, presto chango: bias.

And I don't know why. All the stitches were picked up the same way. And they line up, no biasing at all, along both fronts, biasing increasingly along the tops of the fronts and the hood. If I'd misaligned the stitches, I'd expect the biasing to continue all the way around once it starts, but it doesn't. At this point, the only option I can see is to rip this all out (a week of work!), and start again, but I hate to do that when I don't know what I did wrong in the first place - because how will I avoid doing it again? Any thoughts? I could use some advice here...

Paying attention

This is just a quick post (I think - who knows what'll happen once I start typing).  It's that time of year when things can start to feel sort of frayed and scattered.  And of course, what I'm feeling is nothing compared to what the people of Boston have been going through, or those in West (Texas).  Last week was a terrible week for so many people.  I spent a lot of last week having (as one might imagine) a lot of reactions to what felt like a deluge of around-the-clock bad news; I wasn't sure what to say about it, but it turns out I don't have to, because Erica wrote a post that really says everything I could have wanted to say, except more clearly.

I was feeling pretty frayed and scattered even before that, and I've been working pretty consistently on reminding myself to be here and now, not all the other places that my mind wants to go.  For me, the best way to remember that is to get my feet onto dirt.  So I've been trying to get myself (and Tilly - honestly, there is no better companion when seeking mindfulness than a dog; dogs definitely know how to stay in the moment) onto the trail at least a couple of times each week.  And my trails have certainly offered me a lot to pay attention to!  The weather has been a bit crazed.  Lots and lots of fog for a long time.

Is it just me, or does that look like Britain?  That's one of my favorite places to hike.  The other has been equally foggy - one morning it was so dense I couldn't see around the corner.  But I did get one moment of clearing.

It closed in again right away. 

The hillsides have shifted from purples and greens to reds.  The monkey flowers are out in full force.

And I've even found some Indian paintbrush (at least, I think that's what it is?  Willow?  Can you confirm?) in a drainage on the west side of the hill.

The sage will be out soon, bringing purple back to the color spectrum.  And I know that the blue-eyed grass is out, except not when I'm on the trail - at that time of the morning (and in the fog instead of sun), the flowers are shut up tight.

Knitting continues.  The sweater has grown large and unwieldy enough to make bad meeting knitting.  I thought I'd finished the hood, but when I tried it on, it was too small, so I picked out the kitchener stitching in the top and am adding some length.  I'm worried about the sleeves, as well, as they seem short to me (even though they're the same length as the body to the armscyes), but I'm going to finish up the zipper bands and icord trim and see how it fits with that added width in the body.  If that doesn't straighten out the fit of the sleeves, I'll snip out a stitch and add some length before grafting the cuffs back on (and thanks to Erica for that suggestion!).

It's gotten so big that I finally treated myself to a basket from the farmer's market (I've long been thinking about getting one for exactly this sort of large colorwork project that requires lots of balls of yarn to be carried around with the knitting at all times) so that I could have everything in one place.

See?  Perfect!

But, as I said, it does mean that this no longer makes good meeting knitting.  So I cast on for a pair of Lady Treymour socks (from Clara Parkes' Knitters Book of Socks).  Pictures of those next time, but I have to admit that the charm of knitting socks again (which I haven't done for some time) means that I haven't just been saving them for meetings - I need to start focusing on this sweater again if I want to finish it before I run out of fog.

The Easter bunny wears fur?

So, true story.  Friday night is pizza and movie night around here.  I was sitting on the couch, watching a movie with Rick and the girls, when I thought I dropped something.  I reached under the couch to see if I had, and came up with...an egg.  Which I found rather surprising, since we were in the den, and the chickens, so far as I know, do not come into the house to lay eggs.  I chalked it up to general weirdness and went on watching.  (Upon re-reading this prior to hitting publish, it occurs to me to wonder what that says about the general state of weirdness in our household.) 

The next morning, Rick came into the living room, holding up another egg.  He'd found it at the foot of the bed, on the floor.

I should be clear here - I'm talking about raw eggs.  Not hard-boiled eggs, not Easter eggs, not chocolate eggs (alas).  Chicken eggs, of the sort our chickens lay.

Fifteen minutes after Rick had announced his discovery, I heard dog paws clickety-clacketying down the hall, and then heard a rather hollow-sounding plonk at my side.  I looked down to see (you guessed it): an egg.  And a very pleased-looking Mathilda.  Who apparently is under the mistaken impression that she is the Easter bunny.

We haven't had any more special deliveries since then (although, given the under-the-couch egg, I am wondering where and in what state I will find other such "gifts" that I haven't noticed yet).  Our best guess is that some of the chickens have stopped laying in the coop (for a while, some of them were very attached to a nest on the side of the house, but then they all figured it out) because one of the chickens has gone broody, and persists in sitting in the nesting box all day, if allowed, making cranky noises at anyone who comes to bother her.  I'm guessing that the other hens find it easier to just lay elsewhere, and Tilly wanted to make sure that we weren't missing anything.  Never a dull moment around here!

In fiber-related news, I finished my first "real" weaving project.  Realizing that I don't wear long rectangular scarves, generally, I knew that I'd need to think of something else to focus my weaving attention on.  So I decided to try napkins. 

For a first-time experiment, they didn't turn out badly.  They are narrower than I'd hoped, as I warped the loom to an 90-inch warp (hoping to weave four 20-inch napkins that were 10 inches wide), using my new 10-dent heddle and a very nice linen warp (FibraNatura Flax).  Alas, the 250 meters that I had wasn't enough, so I ended up about an inch and a half shy of the width I'd wanted.

The weft yarn is Plymouth Grass (a 65% cotton/35% hemp yarn).  I tried a couple of new things on this project, for fun.  I hemstitched each end of the napkins as I came to them (a 2x2 hemstitch).

You can kind of see it there.  Now, I am not fond of fringes in my linens, so I trimmed two of the napkins off very close to the hemstitch (still need to do a bit more neatening up), and left two a bit longer, to see how they wear.  Any weavers out there want to tell me the best way to finish edges so that they look neat and have no fringe at all?

In the main part of each napkin, I started with leno (alternating 2x2)(you can see it more closely below), and then played around with weft floats using a pick-up stick for the rest of each napkin.

I finished them by washing and drying them.  They turned out, as I said, smaller than I'd wanted, but very absorbent and soft and cushy.  So I consider them to be a reasonable success for a first time out.

I immediately trucked off to my LYS to get more yarn for more napkins.  This time I ended up with a linen warp (Habu, L25/3 linen, 331 meters)(this is a finer-weight yarn than the FibraNatura, so we'll see how that works), and a blended warp (Plymouth Linen Concerto 48% rayon/42% linen/10% cotton; this is the yarn I used for the weft of the scarf that was my first project).

What you see there is the loom, dressed after two attempts.  The first time, thinking I'd have enough warp yarn for a longer warp, I went for it, only to find, about an inch and a half shy of my total 10-inch width, that I was out of warp yarn.  So I unwarped the loom, which, it turns out, was not as easy as I'd hoped.  I persevered, however, and rewarped it somewhat shorter, but all the way from one side to the other (hooray!).  I finished the warping and tying on this morning, so this is ready to go.

At the same time, I can't help but think of bigger projects, not to mention stash-busting projects (and more on me and my stash and our recent adventures in the next post).  I think that I want to weave the girls some blankets.  They will, of course, have to be woven in strips, but once I got the idea in my head, it wouldn't go away.  And then I remembered a skein of sock yarn that I got when I was in the Rockin' Sock Club a few years ago - a skein that is not at all my sort of colorway, but that Younger Daughter immediately laid claim to.  It's been waiting for the right time to get out of stash and into a project for her.

Talk about Easter egg colors!  Of course, that's not going to be enough for a blanket, but I also remembered four ounces of gorgeous Falkland fiber, hand-dyed by Erica, that I bought because the braid made me think of Younger Daughter (I now realize why).

Well, surely something can be done with that combination?  I'm thinking of using handspun yarn from that braid as the weft in the middle parts of the blanket, and the sock yarn for the weft at the edges.  But that leaves the warp.  Well, how about that yarn I bought to take the kilt hose class at Sock Summit, but which I haven't used?

Yup.  I think we've got something there.  I spent some time today thinking about maths.

Which rather made my head hurt.  I think I'll have enough of the two weft yarns, but will probably order one more skein of that sock yarn for the warp.  I have time, as I need to spin the Falkland up.  You can see there my sketch of my plan.  This'll be a twin bed size, so about 76" by 48".  I'm thinking three strips of a textured weave in the middle, and then four strips, arranged log cabin style, around the edges, woven in a colorwork pattern.  I have time to work out which while I get through my current napkin project and the kitchen towel project (planned to be a colorwork one) after that.  Once those are done, I think I'll be ready to tackle something bigger.

Meanwhile, I am plugging away at the Northmavine Hoody.  Whilst watching Paris-Roubaix this morning, I finished the second sleeve and got it onto the needle with the body stitches and the first sleeve, and am now working on the raglan decreases.  Little by little.  I keep reminding myself that this is not a project for the faint-of-heart.  Not only does it have lots of finishing details still to come (knitting ribbed bands along the fronts and then picking up and knitting an i-cord bind off all the way around the fronts, hood, and bottom of the sweater, then installing a zipper and knitting pockets), but the number of ends to be woven in are astronomical (four ends per every eight rows; I am not kidding).  I have been taking time at regular intervals to weave ends in so that they're not all waiting for me.  In fact, I believe that the second sleeve and its ends are calling me even as I type. 

So there's the question.  Do I weave?  Get that spinning started?  Weave in ends?  Fold laundry?

Well.  I think we know the answer to that last one.

A theme

I was taking pictures of various things I've been working on, and looking at pictures of some of the non-fiber pursuits I've been engaged in recently, and I think that there's a theme arising.  Let's see if you see it, too.

Maybe?

It's all purple and green around here, apparently.  I've been gazing out of my office window longingly these last few weeks, noting that the ceonothus are in bloom, but unable to get out there to enjoy them.  Last weekend, I took a nice long hike in the hills behind my house, and, as you can see from that top photo, they are blooming away.

And buzzing with bees.  Walking along the path bordered in these bushes is like walking through a giant beehive.  The bees are so focused on the flowers that they almost never actually fly into the path.  I went again this morning, much earlier in the day, and found that bees' alarm clocks must ring later than mine.  It was quiet on the way out, and I got up to the top of the hill to find a lovely view waiting for me.

Mist-covered hills and mountains stretching away to the east.  And back down again in time to catch the sun making it over the big hill I'd just climbed.

By the time I got back down, the bees were hard at work again.  I was relieved. 

There's also green and purple in the latest knitting I've been doing.

This is the body of the Northmavine Hoody, a Kate Davies pattern from her new book, Colours of Shetland, which I absolutely adore.  Totally aside from the patterns (there are quite a few in there that I'd knit), her writing is lovely, and she has essays about each of the places that inspired the patterns in the book.  It's truly a pleasure to read and look at.  The patterns are also well-thought-out, with the kinds of little details that I enjoy seeing in my knitwear - you can see the turned hem in the picture up top, and this pattern has several other details like that, the sort of thing that make it look professional when it's done - handmade, rather than homemade.  As you can see, I have finished the body, and tonight I will cast on for the first sleeve.  I'd love to finish this before the May Grey sets in around here - I think it could get some use.  It's knitted out of Jamieson and Smith 2-ply jumper weight, on size two needles, so it's a lovely weight, and a nice crunchy wool, in colors that I wear all the time (I admit to a total lack of originality on this one - I ordered the yarn used in the pattern, in the colours used in the pattern - but they are so me!).

And then some of you may have noticed that other picture I slipped in there.  What's that, you may ask?  That is the Cricket loom that my mom bought for me and the girls about a year and a half ago.  We wove the yarn included in the package, and then it rather languished.  When my LYS advertised a weaving class, using exactly this rigid heddle loom, I jumped at it.  So yesterday morning I went in and spent a lovely four hours at the store, re-learning how to dress the loom, and getting some good tips for using it.  When I got home, I spent a busy hour reclaiming my front and back patios from the chickens (have I mentioned that five chickens not only produce a good plenty of eggs, they also produce a good plenty of poop?), and trying to devise some way of arranging various patio furniture and cushions so that the chickens will not think that roosting on my patio furniture is a good thing.  (I'm also working on convincing them to return to their coop at night to roost.  They used to, until they discovered the couch on the front patio, so now they need retraining.  Any suggestions?)  Once that was done, I settled down on the back patio under the blooming wisteria (more purple and green, but no photos), listening to the bumblebees bumble about in the flowers, and weaving.  This morning, I wrapped the whole thing up, and got this.

I'm pretty happy with the final result, especially given that it's my first time out, really. 

The warp is a merino/cotton blend, in a solid seafoam green.  The weft is a linen/rayon/cotton blend, variegated (as you can see).  I finished it by washing it in my washer on the wool setting, and then chucking it in the dryer for a bit.  I wanted to soften the linen up, and figured that tightening up the wool a bit wouldn't be a bad thing, and I was right.  It is much more drapey now, and will probably continue to soften up with wear.  As I was weaving, I got curious as to how this would have turned out differently had I switched the warp and weft yarns, so as soon as I was done, I redressed the loom, using the linen/rayon/cotton blend for the warp.  I didn't have much yarn left - really, this second time around is more in the nature of an experiment, and good practice for locking down in my memory how to dress a loom - so this won't be a "real" scarf.  I also realized that the girls had "misplaced" several bits and bobs (read: the clamps for fixing the loom to the table, and the dent hook), but I managed just fine.

A heavy box pinned the loom in place and, in case anyone cares, an orifice hook works nicely as a dent hook.

As I said, this will be half the width of the first one, but I'm plugging along, and it's interesting to see how different the two yarns look when woven the other way around.

I know I'd said I wasn't going to get into weaving - too many fiber sports already.  But I figure a little bit couldn't hurt, right?  And it seems like a great way to start using more of my handspun, not to mention the rest of my stash.  In fact, to that end, I appear to have ordered another heddle, a ten-dent one this time (I don't think I'm quite using my vocabulary correctly; I'll get there), which is more appropriate to weaving the fingering weight yarn that makes up so much of my knitting and spinning stash.  I may also have ordered a stand for the loom and a book with some ideas for rigid heddle loom projects.

Oops.

Many steps

I was about to say that I can't believe it's been over a month since I last posted, but that's not true.  I've been aware that I haven't been posting, and I've also been aware that it's an artifact of something that I know to be true about me, which is that I can only be disciplined in a certain number of areas at the same time - anything else just falls off the table.  This last month has involved a tremendous amount of discipline at work (yes, I'm looking at you, Fall schedule build), in my knitting (you'll see what I mean), and in the area of exercise.  The blog just fell right off the table, mostly because in those moments when I wasn't doing one of those things, I did not want to be on the computer - I wanted to be knitting, or reading, or talking to the girls and Rick (or all three at once).

First, knitting.  I finished the Gathered Blouse sweater (a long time ago, actually - I just haven't been able to get it together enough to be wearing it when it's a) light out, b) the beginning of the day, and c) a camera is nearby).  But it is done, and I am actually wearing it now, so in lieu of no photos, here are some bad photobooth photos (better than not posting, still, right?).

It is definitely a loose fit, and I think I could have gone down a size (and yes, I have washed it on hot and dried it - this is what I've got).  It's very comfortable, though, and the cotton is soft soft soft, which I love.

Not a great shot, but it lets you see the pleats around the neckline.  There were a lot of things I really loved about this pattern - it is very well thought out, and brings some nice details in, like the gathers at the neck and sleeve tops, and the short rows that raise the back neck a little.  And the braid across the small of the back.

So, I do wish I knitted this in a smaller size, but not enough to pull it out.

I also finished the couch blanket (the Mitered Crosses Blanket) that I've been working on for ages and ages (I was rather embarrassed when I looked at the start date on my Rav page).  This is part of my goal to use stash yarn (the sweater was knitted from stash) and to finish projects more often than starting new projects with new yarn.

Knitting the blanket didn't require discipline, really - it's a fun knit, the squares are small and portable, and easy to do without looking at the pattern.  But putting it together (involving picking up stitches and then doing a three-needle bind-off) took a bit more self-discipline.  And weaving the ends in?

That took a glass of wine.  It was a big pile.


But the blanket has gotten a LOT of use - I haven't even blocked it yet, because one of us is always sitting with it.

I did, finally, manage to get a picture of it laid out.

All in all, I am very happy with my first (non-baby) blanket.  It's a good size for covering most of oneself, if one is small.  And in fact, it served as a blanket on the nights I slept on the couch last week to keep my coughing from waking Rick up (I got felled by one of those horrible head colds that are going around - more on that in a moment).  If you don't mind finishing work, this is one I recommend.

The other area of self-discipline lately has to do with a challenge on the walking front that I took on, encouraged by my SIL (who has REALLY been challenging herself in this area lately) - a half-marathon.  I've been working up to longer and longer walks (aiming for my old racewalking speed from back in the day - and, someday I hope, faster), and I finally committed and signed up for the San Diego half-marathon, which took place this past Sunday.  Of course, last week, I ended up getting really sick for the first time in years - I was truly worried I'd have to pull out (it's hard to walk 13.1 miles when you can't breathe).  But thanks to a Z-pac and some sleep, plus the weeks of training I'd done before, I went.  (I just want to note that this was the day the time changed, and that I had to be ready for a 7:18 am start, which meant getting down there by about 6:30, which meant leaving the house at about 5:45, which meant getting up at what felt like really really early, since all of that was - let's be honest with ourselves - an hour earlier than that.)

There's the start (from the back of the second-to-last wave).  And I walked that sucker, I truly did.

(One of only three photos taken of me by Older Daughter.)  And I finished.  As a walker, I'd been hoping to make a 3 hour total time.  By the time I got to the race, though, having been really sick all week, I was worried that I wouldn't make the 3 1/2 hour course closure time.  But I did.  In fact, I finished in 2:54:21.  I'm good with that.

But no pictures of the finish!  No pictures with my medal!  Rick and the girls came down to cheer me on at around mile 10 (after the big hill - that's where Older Daughter took that picture), and again at the finish.  My dear friend Vivienne came down to congratulate me, too.  We had enough time to drink some water, eat a bagel and get the girls something to eat, and then we had to race off to get Younger Daughter to the first of her St. Patrick's Day Irish dance performances (it's that time of year when her school goes to various senior centers, churches, and VFWs to perform for St. Patrick's Day).  To which I went, sweaty and footsore, but pretty proud.

And there it is.  That's what I've been doing.  I'm scaling back the long training walks for a little while, to get ready to walk a 5K with Older Daughter, and the first pass of the fall schedule is in, so with luck I'll have more time and energy on the weekends to post updates on what I'm doing (which includes knitting another sweater and, soon, taking a class on how to weave with my little Cricket loom), and to catch up on what everyone else has been doing in the knitting world.  I've missed it!

Happy Imbolc!

It has been a very good weekend. Yesterday morning started with this first photo below (dratted Blogger app), and ended with the second.

In between, I went to the farmer's market (while Older Daughter and Rick toured SpaceX and Younger Daughter went to dance), stopped by the stables to pet horses, went for a long walk with Younger Daughter and Tilly (with a stop for a lunch of clam chowder), saw Beasts of the Southern Wild, went out to fondue for dinner, had a lovely brunch this morning, walked nine miles, did laundry, and made dinner. Whew!

And now Imbolc has come and gone, the turning point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, when the days really do start to feel longer, and dawn comes a bit earlier, and the darkness falls just a little later. I am looking forward to the turn towards the light.