Transitions

You would think that, now that the semester is over, I'd have more time for things like blogging and knitting, but somehow it hasn't worked out that way.  I have, in fact, still been knitting (although less than you'd think), but I've been spending so much time at the computer trying to get through several really big jobs that have been waiting for my summer "free" time, that whenever I am not working, I'm avoiding the computer like the plague.

I am done with two of those tasks (or at least, they're in someone else's hands for now), so I'm hoping the computer allergy will abate.

It also doesn't help that I tend to think of Sunday as my blogging day, but I've been travelling the last several weekends (lots and lots of driving up and down the state involved), so Sundays have involved cars, more than anything.  Basically, I'm in transition from a spring schedule to a summer one, and in the same way that, once one has taken everything out of the trunk on a road trip, it doesn't all seem to want to fit back in the same way, I am trying to get everything to fit.

The travelling not only included the language revitalization work that always makes me happy, but took me to parts of the state that I love.  The rolling hills north of the Bay Area just seem to tug at my heart.

No wonder the cows look so content (see them there?).

The grass was just starting to turn from a lovely spring green into what will become a tawny lion brown.

And the oaks...

I have a tendency to take a rather inordinately large number of pictures of oaks.

But I really do love their shapes.

All of the meeting time meant that I needed something that required very little concentration.  Luckily, I had just the thing.  A few weeks ago, I cast on for the Indigo Ripples Skirt, which I've been wanting to knit since I first saw it in IK ages ago.  You may remember that I bought some Rowan denim on sale when I was in Sacramento over the holidays, so as part of my plan to knit down some of the stash, I paired the two up, and off I went.

(Not the best picture, but I figure I'd better post while I'm willing to sit at the computer.)

I knitted this very much as the pattern said, except that I made the stockinette portion longer, and knitted fewer repeats of the lace at the bottom, to make this more into something that I might actually wear to work.  I'd been wondering how well the yarn would wash, and whether it would tighten up into something un-see-through enough for public wear; the swatch seemed to suggest that it would.  And I think it did. 

It's very comfortable.  It's a bit darker than it appears in these photos, but much lighter than the yarn was in the ball.  (In fact, the yarn released dye on my hands every time I knit, so that my fingers and palms were blue, and it was possible to see the way I wind the yarn around the fingers of my right hand by following the blue lines it left.  However, it hasn't left any dye on my skin since I washed it.)  When I was done, I threw it into the washer and the dryer, which seems to have taken care of the extra dye and faded it out some.  It also shrank by several inches lengthwise, which was exactly what the swatch predicted, so I'd planned for it.

All in all, this turned out well.  I knitted a skirt a few years back, which did not (it's so huge on me that I only wear it to the beach as a cover-up - it's knitted from Elsbeth Lavold Hempathy - and it didn't wash up as un-see-through as this one did), so I'd kind of worried.  It's not something that is necessarily fun to knit, either, although it was very easy.  I find cotton to be hard on the hands, although to be fair, the Rowan Denim isn't nearly as bad as some others I've worked with.  I would use it again, but I think it'll be good to give my hands a break.

Especially since the other big project that I'm currently working on (momentarily unbloggable) is knitted from a linen yarn that's a real bear to work with.  It's stiff, so it feels like it's constantly springing away from me.  It takes a lot of work, and my hands can't deal with it for too long. 

So in the meantime, I'm on the hunt for something that'll be a good antidote for that one.  I've been carrying around the pattern for the Color Affection Shawl for months; maybe the time has come to find some yarn for that one?