Merry, bright...

Spring Fling!!!

Yes, I know...it's two days before Christmas, a little early to be talking about spring, but I just had to give a little whoop of joy for the fact that I've secured a place at The Loopy Ewe's 2009 Spring Fling retreat! 

So...whoop-whoop-whoop!!! :)

It's like a special little Christmas gift! Whee!!!

16 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 1= 16

Ok, so...continuing the WIP countdown (and up, and down, and...), I finally put a nail in the coffin of finished Paley...


Seriously, folks, this is as good as she's gonna get...


All the while I knit this sweater, I planned on loving it. I had no indication that I would have any other feelings for this sweater other than undying love and devotion. The yarn made me feel so happy as I knit it, and my mental vision of the finished product danced in my head with glee. Thus, it was a rude awakening to have to stumble through feelings of frustration, angst and a couple instances of periodic loathing before finally getting it finished to a point that I didn't hate it enough to never want to wear it. I'd invested too much time into it.

In all fairness, I cannot bring myself to fault the pattern for my problems, since I took some liberties with it. On the other hand, my biggest liberty I took was substituting a different gauge yarn (used DK instead of Aran), but I made the necessary adjustments and that seemed to do the trick as far as fit through the body.

The neckline? Whole other story. I'm not sure if it was my yarn change that threw the shaping off, or if it was truly designed to fit only those people built like slope-shouldered giraffes (gauging from the picture in the pattern of the lovely model who appears perfectly normally proportioned, if wispy and petite...not that I'm bitter...that wouldn't seem to be the case), but that is where the bulk of my problems started. (Oh, and just as an aside...knitting pattern pictures? In general, they LIE. Just sayin'.)

I did a lot of finagling to get that neckline to work...ended up ripping out at least three sections of the colorwork to make it narrower. And in the end, I did my own jury-rigged shaping of threading a drawstring through the bindoff row inside and cinching it up to keep the neckline from oddly bowing out. Don't laugh, it works.

And then there were the button bands of doom. Honestly. Three times. I knit and ripped those damn bands three times. I won't go through it all here (the details are on my Rav project page if you really want the nitty gritty), but suffice it to say, the garter stitch bands the pattern called for just were NOT going to work...too stretchy. In the end, Paley-the Cardigan is now Paley-the Mock-Cardigan, also known as Paley-whose-fronts-have-been-stitched-shut-and-is-now-a-pullover. Hey, again...it worked.

In the end, though, I will admit with caution that I am in like with the sweater. It holds promise that our differences can be forgotten and we will get over the rough times we've seen together. In an act of good will ('tis the season, after all), I wore it to church today, and while I do wish the sleeves were a bit longer (I find it so hard to gauge sleeves on raglans, even top down ones), the sweater feels very good on...it is warm, and all of my odd little "fixes" really did seem to do the trick to making it a sweater I will wear. So, yeay me. :}

So, if you're still with me after that sweater rant, and if you're keeping count, finishing Paley brought my WIP count down to fifteen! Yeay! Then I decided to knit yet another unplanned Christmas gift to the line up. Look! It's a hat!


But no! It's not just a hat! It's a hat with a hole in the back! And buttons!


This incredibly cute and clever pattern, Hannah, was created for hat wearers who also sport ponytails, which makes it the perfect accessory for a friend of mine (who hopefully does not read this blog or at least will not until I see her next to give her this gift) who has gorgeous long hair and often wears it in a ponytail. Hopefully I'll be able to get a picture of her modeling it, because I'm sure it will look better on her than on my usual hat-model stand in, the anniversary clock, especially since the clock does not have a ponytail.

So, back to the math...fifteen plus the hat is sixteen, minus the hat is fifteen. But wait! I still had one more friend who I thought I might knit something for, totally unplanned, of course. Thus, I've cast on the Athena neckwarmer. (Thus, back to sixteen!) No pictures yet, but I'm using CPY Taos in a red/orange colorway. And it is my first venture into entrelac, and let me tell you...it's fun! Purling backwards without having to turn the piece is definitely key to making this go quickly. I don't think it should take long to finish. Yeay!

A day in pictures...

...and some other miscellanea...


I woke up today with a scratchy throat, a headache and a cough. Thus, I've self-medicated with echinacea, Zicam and Twinings Peppermint Tea. (And two Advil late this afternoon when I just couldn't take the headache anymore.) I've been bone tired all day and nearly fell asleep while waiting at the deli counter of the grocery store. Interestingly, I'm feeling somewhat better tonight (knock on wood). Here's hoping that continues, because this is not a good time to get sick.


I love the color of winter light as it falls through my front windows and creates a swath of warmth, brightening everything. Winter light, though less plentiful than that of other seasons (especially here in southwestern PA!), is quite beautiful, I think.


I'm getting used to our new, narrower Christmas tree. It's still bright and festive. That's what counts, right?


My WIP count is now down to sixteen, as I finished the Just Enough Ruffles scarf tonight. What a fun pattern it was! And the Malabrigo Silky Merino? Divine to work with! I want one for me now! (Am I all about the exclamation points today or what?!)

And a pictureless note...my washing machine is making unhealthy squeaking sounds. This washer is not that old. Only two years. Or is it three? Still, that's not old in appliance years! It is not allowed to break! Do you hear that, Universe? Not! Allowed!

Seventeen...

After going to my Ravelry projects page and adding two more WIPs to it, I stopped to count. You can do the same thing by looking at my WIP counter to the right. I now have seventeen -- 17, one-seven -- WIPs. That's not including the five projects I have in hibernation (at least one of which is getting frogged for sure). 

Seventeen.  

That just seems so...wrong. 

I know I'm not the only knitter like this. In fact, I imagine there are knitters out there who can beat my WIP score. But it does make me think back to the early days of this knitting obsession, back when I felt like I was going a little over the edge by starting two, maybe three at the most, projects at the same time. I mean, that felt a little crazy to me. Had someone told me that about two years later, I'd have seventeen projects in various states of completion all at the same time, I'd have thought them insane. Yet, here I am. Now I think I'm the one who is insane.

What makes this even more concerning is that ten of the seventeen are over halfway done. A couple are thiiiis close to being done. I think I need to get down to business and prioritize a way to get some of these done.

A list. 

Yes. I need a list. After the holidays. Stay tuned.

In case you are wondering, the two projects I added that brought my WIPs to that woeful total are: another striped scarf, this one half the width of the pattern so I can use up some odd balls of Silk Garden I have on hand, and a Just Enough Ruffles scarf, which is going to be a Christmas gift for a friend. Yes, I know...I said I was not knitting Christmas gifts this year. Well, technically I was not planning to knit any gifts...but this scarf was largely unplanned, so there you have it. I was just going to give this knitting friend the pretty Malabrigo Silk Merino yarn I'm using for it, but I saw the scarf at Yarn Harlot's site a couple weeks ago, and I thought maybe this would be a better use for the yarn, and the person in question will still get to enjoy it. :)

Just like cotton candy...

Walter: Oh, Peter! If you're going out, could you bring me back some cotton candy?

Peter: Cotton candy.

Walter: Yep. Blue, not pink! I've had a craving. Must be the hyacinths...lovely blue flowers...

Fringe, Episode 6, "The Cure"

Surprising how many things I seem to be able to relate back to Fringe in some way these days...

Doesn't it just remind you of cotton candy? It did me, especially when it was all rolled up in its clear plastic baggie. And soft...sooooo soft. It's a 3 oz. batt of The Sanguine Gryphon's merino/superwash merino/silk roving, colorway Earl of Doncaster, which I really think should be renamed Walter's Cotton Candy, though I don't think TSG has done a line named after Fringe characters and their gastronomical idiosyncrasies. Yet. Heck, she could get a whole line just from Walter and the things he missed eating and drinking while in the asylum for 17 years. But I digress.

Though my yarn diet is technically over, I'm trying really hard to not buy new yarn right now. But fiber for spinning? That's different. Yeah. We rationalize like that here. :::sigh::: (And by "we" I mean "I".)

I've been trying for over a year to learn to spin with a drop spindle, and I'm very not good at it. In fact, my spinning skills leave much to be desired. At first I blamed the spindle, which my father-in-law made for me. It was quite weighty and it did more dropping than spinning. So he made a second one for me. A little better, but then that just highlighted how bad I was at this art form. Then I thought it was the roving I'd originally purchased. I knew nothing about roving, so I bought some inexpensive stuff that I figured would make do. I read books. I watched video clips.

Finally, I went to a class on drop spindling. The class served dual purposes of letting me see someone actually spin in person (which I hadn't had the opportunity to do before) and it basically confirmed for me that I did indeed understand the basics of the process. So, what I was lacking was simply practice and repetition. That is apparently the important factor of learning to spin...duh. (It is also the important factor in learning to do push-ups and developing stamina at jumping rope, both activities I've been doing of late and which are part of a larger story that deserves its own post. So, another time.)

So, I came to the conclusion that it was just time I needed to put in with my spindles. Fine. But that hasn't stopped me from playing with different fibers to see if they spin any easier than others. And let's face it...I'm a self-confessed color addict, so buying roving for the sake of its beautiful colors is reward unto itself. I also recently purchased these...

Another from The Sanguine Gryphon, Blue Faced Leicester, colorway Fire in the Evening (which matches my bedspread rather nicely)...and...

...this one, from Briar Rose Fibers, also BFL (sorry, I can't remember the colorway number, and it is upstairs and I am downstairs and lazy at the moment). Hm...also matches my bedspread nicely, no?

So now I have beautiful fibers to spin with...and no excuse to not keep at it. I will say, I am finding spinning with the batt to be much, much easier than with any roving I've used that comes in the long, snakelike form (seriously, I need to learn the proper terminology for all this). The batt is so soft and basically pre-drafted already, which makes me very happy, because I never feel like I'm doing that drafting thing correctly. I often suspect I'm doing something so wrong that the spinning police, or in this case a representative from The Sanguine Gryphon, is going to show up at my door, take my spindles from me and tell me in a very authoritative voice, "Never, never do that to our fibers again! Ever!" and then I will be black-listed from any and all fiber-buying venues. I may even be banned from ever owning a sheep. I don't know.

I realize that spinning, like knitting or many other tasks, is something that everyone does slightly differently. There are the basics, but you have to come up with your own technique that works right for you. And basically, I am getting yarn from my efforts. Not very neat looking yarn, but yarn. So maybe the spinning police will just let me off with warning for now? I will keep practicing, I promise.

Is that the sound of...Christmas?

I started listening to my Christmas music playlist this past week...

I remember how, for many years, I was all about traditional Christmas songs. I grew up with Johnny Mathis, Peter, Paul & Mary, and the Norman Luboff Choir, and that was my Christmas music. Later, my parents bought other Christmas albums -- mostly country -- and it annoyed me when they'd have a bunch of songs on them that I didn't know. Silly, really...I mean, how many artists do you really need to listen to singing Silver Bells and Hark, the Herald Angels Sing? Srsly.

Thankfully, my holiday music preferences have widened over the years, and I am more wont to listen to the non-traditional songs now. (Though I will admit that I have at least five different versions of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" on my iPod.) In addition to the "top 20" songs on the playlist above, I've got a ton of Trans-Siberian Orchestra (I so want to see them in concert one of these years!), some Celtic Christmas music (The Night Heron Consort), Handel's Messiah, and, yeah, Johnny Mathis' Merry Christmas...just can't let go of the classics. 

Some of my favorites from the ones listed above, though, are Rudy by The Be Good Tanyas (makes me cry!), Gary by MC Lars (makes me laugh!), Barenaked Ladies' God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (all three of which are part of the extended version A Winter's Night CD), and Snoopy's Christmas (which I posted about last year). The one I play the most, usually in the car and really loud, is Relient K's version of The Twelve Days of Christmas. Dude...rockin'!

PS...if you figure out what they're saying in the "five golden rings" part of Day 10, would you let me know? It's driving me nuts that I can't figure it out.

PPS...in the world of knitting...I was just booking along on my Paley yesterday...finished the left front and did the entire right front. As I was about halfway through the right front, however, my knitter's Spidey-sense started kicking in telling me something was no right. The right front was going way faster than the left had gone, and it clearly seemed I was working with fewer stitches than I had been on the left (as opposed to working with fewer marbles, which is not a rarity in my world). As we knitters are wont to do, though, I kept going a while before finally giving in and comparing the two panels. Yep. The left was about 2" wider than the right. I knew I had the correct number of stitches on the right because I'd counted them several times, both before and after the decreases in the first stockinette row. So I counted the stitches on the left panel. Uh huh. Too, too many. I know I'd counted them too, but clearly I counted wrong. :::sigh::: So, today's task was to rip out the left and start it over. Thankfully, it moves along quickly, but really? I prefer to knit these things only once. All I can say is this sweater darned well better fit when it's done.