Round two

Today's post: Our second summer trip, a knitting project (almost done), a spinning project (done except for soaking), and a few more bits and pieces.

Our second trip of the summer was to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where my SIL has family, and where her family was kind enough to give us all a place to stay for the better part of ten days.  It's hard to go wrong with a view like this:

The kids loved it - they could pretty much do what they liked, when they liked, so they spent lots of time in the water, canoeing, kayaking, swimming, or just hanging out.

We also hiked.

And went to Lake Superior.

Lake Superior never ceases to amaze me.  It's just so...big.

And really, really cold.  Which didn't stop the girls from going in.

Brrr...  I preferred playing with rocks.

Oh!  And I learned to drive an outboard!  No photographic evidence, though.  (I know, this is not a big deal if you are a person who grew up around lakes, but I didn't.  So it was.)

It was an awesome week.  We do not get to spend enough time with Rick's brother and sister-in-law, or with our niece, so having a whole week together (and we got to have our niece out here with us for ten days before that!) was an absolute treat.  Younger Daughter and our niece get along like a house on fire, and spent three weeks together happily.  Do you ever have the sense, even as something is happening, that this is one of those things that your kids will remember later?  That's how I felt about this trip, and about having our niece here beforehand; days at the beach, going to the movies, boogie boarding (an achievement for my niece, on the list of the summer's achievements - she got really good at riding those waves!).  I always feel lucky when I recognize those moments even as they're happening, and so get to feel grateful both for the moment, and for the memory that it will be.

Younger Daughter also achieved a long-held goal this summer.  She became the proud owner of five chickens.

This is an older photo; they now have all their feathers and are, as of today, probably ready to start living in their coop full-time (until now, they've spent nights in a smaller cage with a brooder lamp on them).  I should also say that the girls did nearly all of the building work on the coop, too, working from the directions that came with it.  They're pretty proud.

As for me, I picked up a long-languishing sweater, with which I am (finally!!) almost done.  I started it last summer, when I couldn't talk about it yet.  But the pattern is out, so it's fair game, and I'm almost done with it (hooray!).  It's the India Print Henley, by Anne Hanson, in Ann Budd's new book The Knitter's Handy Book of Top-Down Sweaters, which I think I will have to get.  I don't have a picture of the whole sweater yet, but here's the body:

I am finishing the second sleeve now, and then it's all done except for weaving in the ends (I already did the button bands and collar).  I'm pushing it hard on the yarn (which is why I did the button bands, etc, before the sleeves, figuring if I had to go to 3/4 sleeves, that would work), but I think I'm going to make it.  The pattern is fabulous, but what's slowed me down on this sweater is the yarn - I'm knitting it from Fibranatura Flax, in a lovely lime-green color.  I know I'll love it once it's done (I already washed the body, actually, because it looked too big, and I wanted to be sure that my swatch wasn't lying to me before I knitted the rest, and it's softened up beautifully), but it is tremendously hard on my hands to knit with, and it makes all the muscles in my shoulders tighten up.  So I haven't been able to make myself do the kind of marathon knitting that I usually do at this stage of sweater development.  Today may be the day, though.  I'm sooooo close...

Last weekend, I also got through a spinning project that I have long been contemplating, with some fiber that I bought nearly two years ago at Lambtown.

Lovely, isn't it?  That's a two-ply yarn, heavy fingering weight (I think - it still needs to be washed).  One ply is spun out of 100% Bombyx Silk, dyed by Dreamy Goat Design Studio with natural dyes, and the other ply is spun out of a superfine merino/bombyx/tussah blend, also dyed by Dreamy Goat Design Studio; both were spun worsted.  I spun the 100% silk from the fold, which I guess means it's not a purely worsted-spun yarn, but it helped tremendously with drafted and control.  What you can't see in that picture is that there are shades of green and blue in among the more dominant osage orange.  I love it.  It looks antique.  There were 2.5 ounces of the bombyx, and 2 of the blend, so I had some silk left over, which is spun up in that little skein on the bottom.  I have about 400 yards of the mixed two ply, and a bit less than 100 of the pure silk two ply.  I will need to find some kind of beautiful shawl pattern that will allow me to put in the occasional row of the 100% silk, don't you think?

And that's nearly all the news that's fit to report.  Last Monday, Older Daughter started her sophomore year in high school (!!), and Younger Daughter started middle school (which is grades 6-8 here), and I took over as department chair (probably best not to talk about that, but let's just say that "congratulations" is probably a less-appropriate response than, "ooooohhhhhhh.....").  Tomorrow, classes start. 

But today, the sun is shining, I have some chicken wire to buy and make into a portable run, and a sweater to finish.  It's all good.

Achievements

OK.  It's been a while.  I kept meaning to post, but, if I am going to be completely honest, it was so nice to truly take some time away from my computer that I couldn't bring myself to sit down at it for anything more than the bare minimum work requirements (OK, that was in July; before that, I was spending so much time at my computer wrapping up several HUGE projects that I couldn't bear to be at the computer to do anything else).  Instead, I spent the month of July and early August as much outdoors as I could be, and loved every minute of it. 

I think I also have been having trouble conceptualizing a blog post that isn't just a recap of all of those lovely grade-school "What I Did With My Summer" essays.*  So instead, I think I'll just hit some of the high points - the things that felt like a challenge, or like something I've wanted to do for a while, or an achievement for someone in the family, and then throw a few additional fun photos in over the next several weeks (because I just downloaded all the pictures off the camera, and there are a LOT).  (Note added later: I realized that there is no sane way to get everything into one post, especially if I want to include some fiber content - and I do! - so I'll just have to do the second half of the summer in the next one.)

First, Younger Daughter "graduated" from her grade school.  This is a bigger deal than it might seem, since she's been going there, first to day care, then preschool, then grade school, since she was about 18 months old.  Next Monday, she starts at her brand-new middle school, and it's going to be a huge change for her.  She's ready, but it was nice to have a moment to celebrate the change.

(Her face is in shadow, but it is the only picture I have that doesn't also include OPK.)(Other Peoples' Kids.)

Very soon thereafter, we packed up and headed to Mammoth for a solid week of getting outside and getting some family time.  During that week, we took our first overnight backpacking trip as a family.  Just one night, but the big goal (from my perspective) was for the girls to want to do it again.  I knew that Rick's trail choice was dead-on when Older Daughter, pack and all, turned to me most of the way through our hike in to say with excitement, "I feel so self-sufficient!" 

We schlepped in about five miles to a string of lakes, where we set up camp.  The views were remarkable (note: not photoshopped in any way).

As were the insects (can you see that golden, sun-lit cloud in between the trees there?  yes, that's right - mosquitoes).

The next morning, we abandoned our big packs for a while, and headed up further into the mountains, following a string of lakes,

(which looked remarkably like parts of the Scottish highlands - check it out, doesn't this look like heather, even?),

to the last of the snow, where Tilly had her own achievement - stepping on the cold frozen stuff for the first time.

She wasn't quite sure what she thought of it.

Two days later, the girls and I went on a half-day horseback riding excursion (not a trivial matter for our non-saddle-trained selves, especially as we climbed - and therefore descended - 2,000 vertical feet during the ride, which requires a lot of work for a rider, if you're planning to help the horse at all).  The top was a reminder that Mammoth is, indeed, an old volcano (dormant only).

But you climb that high up, and you get rewarded by the views.

I also knitted on that trip.  My knitting mojo just isn't what I'd like it to be these days - I'm not sure why I'm feeling jammed up, so, as you'll see in the next post, I'm pulling out some old projects that I think are taking up space in my guilt-ridden back brain, and trying to move those forward.  In Mammoth, however, I started and finished two new things.

That little lovely was a test knit for Anne, who did a stunning photo shoot that puts my efforts to shame; you may want to check it out (the pattern has also been released).

The pattern is Twig and Leaf, and it comes in three sizes - this is the smallest.  It is knitted out of the (new to me) Briar Rose Stella, which is an absolute treat to work with; it's hard to go wrong with a laceweight merino/silk blend in one of Chris' stunning colorways (it even looks like she has one more skein left in this color).  This particular version is destined to go to the Briar Rose booth as a sample, so you can visit it, but I will be casting on to knit my own veryvery soon - it's fun to knit, and utterly wearable.  The only question I have is whether to knit this size, or make the medium.  So many hard choices...
I also finished up a pair of socks for myself while we were there, which I haven't had a chance to wear since coming back, as it's been hot and humid here (le sigh).

These are Clandestine Socks, and they were really great fun to knit.  This is a good travel knitting pattern because, apart from the lace edging, they're quite easy, but fun enough to keep one's attention.  I need to find the yarn label (sorry), but this is a merino/alpaca blend, if I remember correctly, by a local dyer; I picked this yarn up at a local festival about a year ago.

So, that's it for now.  There's more (believe me!), but I think I'll stop here and go work on some spinning I have on the wheel. 


*My brother once got very creative and told his teacher that he'd been to Greenland on his summer vacation.  He even had it straight that Greenland is the colder, less-populated one (as opposed to Iceland).  He apparently had lots of detail for verisimilitude - heaven knows where he got it, probably National Geographic - but the teacher did eventually check with my mom, who was rather surprised to find out where we'd gone that year...  I did not go to Greenland this summer, and I will not tell you that I did.

Still a bit stalled

Look!  Another post!  Looking ahead at my weekend, I realize it's probably now or never.  Younger Daughter turns eleven today, which means a small slumber party - we're taking what Older Daughter used to call a "giggle of girls" out to the movies, then pizza, then sleeping over (four in total, including Younger Daughter, so not too bad at all).  Tomorrow will be recovery time, and then on Sunday, there's a feis in Orange County.

I can't believe it's been eleven years since Younger Daughter was born.  I lay in bed this morning, at 7:30, thinking that eleven years ago at that time, I had just gotten to the hospital, and the nurse had just called my doctor, and I was just hearing her say, "If you want to see this baby arrive, you need to get here now."  She did (barely), and Rick caught the baby, and we had our second daughter.  She was late, and when she decided it was time, she came fast and crazy and she made us all happy, and come to think of it, that pretty much sums her up.

She's my girl with the grin, and I just don't have the words to say how much I love her.  It's a big couple of weeks for her - she turns eleven today, and then next Friday, she's done with fifth grade, and leaving the little Montessori school where she's been for the last ten years (and yes, this is a huge change for us, too!).  She's ready for the change, but a bit scared, too, and that seems exactly right.

(That's her, with her sister, as Cheshire Cat #3 in this year's school play.)  She's going to do just fine.

I'm still plugging away on the last of the really big hanging projects for work.  I'm making progress, but all of the writing that I'm doing seems to be totally sapping any creativity or decision-making ability that I might possess, so while I'm dying to cast on for something new, I can't seem to commit to anything.

So I did what any knitter might do in a moment of ditheringness; I cast on for a washcloth.  I should note that I have never in my life knitted a washcloth.  I wung it.  It's a miracle that I even had cotton in my stash, but I'd seen some tempting little cakes of yarn when I was in Santa Rosa a few weeks ago, and decided to buy a couple, so I used one of those.

Not even marginally exciting.  But satisfying.  This yarn is actually something I'd read about and wanted to both try and support, which is why I grabbed it when I saw it.  It's Be Sweet Bambino Taffy (in the French Revolution colorway); it's a cotton/bamboo blend (70/30), 100 yards to the cake, and I used almost all of it.  I cast on 90 stitches, then mitered away, decreasing on either side of the center until I had nothing.  I left the last stitch live, then picked up stitches all around the edge and knitted a row before casting off to get the red border.  I then cast off all but the last three stitches, and knitted a length of i-cord.  When I'd had enough of that, I looped the i-cord over and knitted it to the washcloth, then knitted those three stitches together, and pulled the end through, and bob's your uncle - washcloth! 

The yarn comes from a women's cooperative in South Africa (that's the link to their site above), and it's a really lovely soft yarn, with some thick and thin that adds an interesting texture.  I didn't block the washcloth (which could also be used as a small kitchen hand towel - and might be), figuring it's going to get wet soon enough, so I'm not sure how much the stitch texture might even out once it's been through the washer.  The one thing that surprised me, and that I'm still not sure what I think about, is that the color changes do not come about because of the dyeing, but because one color of yarn is knotted to the next.  I chose to just knit along and incorporate the knot, but I suppose, if one didn't mind dealing with ends, one could also unknot the yarn and start a new color.  As I said, I'm not sure what I think about that - I think that, if I'd known, it wouldn't feel like a big deal, but it somehow came as a surprise. 

So, that's my project for the week.  I'm still plugging away sporadically at the sweater about which I cannot yet post.  The yarn for that one (Mary Lou asked last time) is Fibranatura Flax, in the Wild Lime colorway.  I say again that I think it'll be a really wearable sweater, once I get through it.  It's just the yarn that's killing me.  I'm seriously tempted to cast on for another little sweater, something summery and short-sleeved, like this one, just to take the edge off.   I may even have bought the pattern.  And I do have the yarn.  I have eight balls of the off-white Plymouth Yarns Vita that I used to knit this hat, which I think would work well.  It's finer than the yarn used in the pattern (the pattern yarn says to get five stitches to the inch on size five needles, while the Vita gets five stitches to the inch on size sevens; so I could just use size sevens, in theory, and get a more open fabric).  I'm dithering.  In the meantime, I may cast on for a pair of these socks, from the latest Knitscene Accessories.  I'm not sure that I'll like the slouchy thing as much on my legs as I do on the model's, but they're appealing to me, and right now that's more than I can say for many other projects.

I guess we'll know by next time whether I succumbed.

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?

Vitamin D

Is done!  I finished the second sleeve on Friday night, in time to throw the sweater into a bowl of water, press it dry-ish, and lay it out to block.  It wasn't even close to dry when I woke up on Saturday, and I knew that I wanted to wear it Saturday evening to go out, so I set it out in the sun (some vitamin D for Vitamin D?), and it was dry in a jiffy.  We had to go to a midday party, but when we came home, I wove the ends in, stitched up the itsy-bitsy seams under the arms (I do love things that are knitted in the round), and it was good to go in time for us to go out to dinner before Cirque du Soleil on Saturday night.  I have worn it every day since then.  (Heh.)

On Mother's Day, I managed to get a few modelling shots.  Both of my girls (and my husband) took me to the beach for a walk at low tide.  I love the way the beach changes with the changing seasons.  At this time of the year, much of the sand that covers the beach by the fall has washed away, laying bare rocks that we don't normally get to see.

 Not to mention the anemones that live on those rocks.

In the spring, seaweeds and grasses begin to wash in from the beds just off-shore.

There is something wonderful about seeing the small, subtle, slow changes that a landscape undergoes from day to day, week to week, throughout the circle of the year.  It's the kind of thing that only comes with going to the same place time and again, season upon season, an intimate relationship with place that depends on time.

 The girls (all of them) were willing to get in on some of the Vitamin D modelling shots with me.

 But since, beautiful as the girls are, they blocked the sweater, Rick also took a few with more of a focus on the knitting.

Although Younger Daughter (and Tilly) still got in on the action (see all that seaweed there?  Tilly thought it smelled just marvelous).

I am not kidding when I say I've worn the sweater every day since finishing it.  This one is going to be a staple in my wardrobe, no doubt in my mind.  It's the perfect weight, it fits beautifully, it hangs nicely, and I like the bracelet-length sleeves (making a virtue of necessity, as I was afraid I'd run out of yarn - but the fact is that if the sleeves were longer, I'd just spend all my time pushing them up).  Even better, this was knitted out of yarn that I had in stash.  Hooray!

Some details:  The pattern is Vitamin D, I used the recommended needle size (which I think was a six, but I can't remember right now).  I knitted it out of Mirasol Nuna, which is 40% Merino, 40% silk, and 20% bamboo (shade 1002).  It's a fabulous combination, both in terms of drape and weight for San Diego. 

A walk on the beach is my idea of a perfect way to spend Mother's Day, especially since all of my very favorite people were there.

(Younger Daughter wants you to know that she took that picture.)

And to make things even better, the afternoon was devoted (aside from doing laundry, which doesn't stop, even for Mother's Day) to knitting.  So next time, I can share one new project OTN (using yarn from stash), and one renewed WIP.

Done, and almost done

Well, the knitting part of the shawl is done, and it has been blocked.  Tonight I weave the ends in, and then it can go to my friend in time to take it up to Berkeley for her daughter's graduation this weekend.  Whew!

I really love the fact that, when laid out, this shawl makes a circle.

Isn't it fun?  And not only is it in ocean colors, but there are waves.

They're almost the same shape as the edges of the water as we walked along the beach (during that lovely low tide during the super moon) last weekend.

 The Pediboo yarn drapes beautifully, and gives this shawl a weight that, along with the shape, helps it to stay in place.  This is the second time I've knitted this one, and I'm not tired of it yet, which is saying something (since I rarely knit the same pattern multiple times).  I guess that means I'd recommend it.

I have also finished the first sleeve on Vitamin D (no pictures, because sleeve pictures aren't particularly inspiring), and will pick up the stitches for the second sleeve tonight.  That went fast, so with luck, I'll be blocking that sweater this weekend.  Maybe (just maybe), I'll even be able to finish and block it on Friday, so I can wear it on Saturday (which is when we're doing most of our Mother's Day stuff - read: going to Cirque du Soleil, because they're in town and the timing was too good to pass up).

Last night was my last night class of the semester (once every two years I teach an evening class), and tomorrow I'll teach my last sections of my other class.  And then it's on to grading.  My evening class is the field methods class that I've talked about in the past, where a patient guinea pig speaker of a language that none of us knows comes to class every week so that we can ask her to say things in that language.  Then it's the job of the students to analyse that data to discover the grammatical rules of the language.  This semester, it was Tigrina, a Semitic language spoken by millions of people in Eritrea and Ethiopia.  The speaker was fabulously patient with us, and the students did an amazing job.  It's hard when this class ends, because it's such an intense experience; I miss seeing everybody each week.  (As an aside, I spent nearly two years trying to convince our budget committee that when I said I needed money to pay a language speaker in order to teach this class, I was not talking about needing a guest speaker in my class - "But we'd all like to have guest speakers" was the chorus - until I finally turned to the faculty member from Psych and said, "You get lab rats.  I need a lab rat.  Except language lives in the brains of humans, so I need a human brain.  With a mouth attached."  That did it.)

And tomorrow night I teach the second half of my spindling class, where we talk about plying, the whys and wherefores.  So after tomorrow night, things really will have wound down.  At least, all of these things will have wound down - the To Do list that I've been putting off for quite some time now still lurks, menacingly, in the background.  So one set of things is done, or almost done (hence the post title), but then more will start.

A little leeway

I'm plugging away on the shawl for my friend's daughter.  I had in my head that her graduation was this weekend, and I was thinking that there was no way it would be done in time for my friend to take with her to Berkeley, but was consoling myself that at least it would be here when they came back.  So I checked in with my friend today, and it turns out that the graduation is a week from this weekend.  Hooray!  It suddenly seems like I have all the time in the world.

The colors aren't quite right in these photos; they're taken with my phone in my office.  As it's a gray day here, the light is very diffuse and (as always with gray days) surprisingly bright, in a dim sort of way.  The lighter color is much closer to a sea-foam green than anything, and I think between that and the pale gray (not to mention the wave at the edge, once it's cast off), it meets the specified liking for ocean colors.

This is moving along fairly quickly.  It helps that I love the yarn (Frog Tree Pediboo), and that most of the rows are stockinette, so I can read while I'm knitting (which I did this last weekend; Nook finally has my favorite Bujold books available, so I got a couple, along with Reich's latest ebook release, which I highly recommend, if anyone is looking for something that will make them think, and perhaps foam at the mouth, in a good sort of way).  It's not a difficult or mind-consuming knit, but a fun one.  I'm done with the striping, so now it's only the gray border to go.  And I have a two-hour Senate meeting this afternoon, which should translate to some progress.

In fact, here you can see the meeting prep corner of my office.

Usually, it's just the spindle (for quiet moments in my office - rare, but nice), and the bag on the left (with an endless stockinette scarf); the Whippoorwill is in the bag to the right, which I'm pleased I remembered today.  (I actually took a few more office pictures today; perhaps a virtual office tour may be forthcoming at some point...)

And speaking of spindling, tomorrow night and next Thursday, I get to teach another spindling class at my LYS!  I always look forward to these classes - I just wish that there was some always-good time to offer them.  Whether I do the two-part series on Thursday nights or Saturday mornings, there's someone who was hoping to take it who can't make it at that time (scheduling college classes is the same way, alas).  But if there's anyone local who is interested and available, there are still spots left.  Not only is it a fun class, but I happen to know that we still have some fiber from DesigKnit, and I'll be bringing the yarn I spun from a combination of her BFL and Polwarth, for petting and inspiration.