good-natured ribbing

Well, in case you haven’t heard, we bought a house! I am quite frazzled trying to get everything in order (we get the house in less than 30 days), which means I have a few concerns:
1. Where will the yarn room be?
2. How will I pay for this damn thing?

So to address #2 (but still related to #1!) I have decided to do the “Knit From Your Stash” thing.
Perhaps someone else will participate???

It will be hard, and I’ve already broken rule 2d. I have yarn arriving any day now from an online order. I will play my get out of jail card. No more purchases. Seriously.

I may have to take up knitting socks just to keep my sanity (see rule 2a).

Wish me luck!

GNR further extends its unstoppable knitting empire today with the first release of CHART-A-RAMA, a web-and-pdf based pattern charting tool. It allows you to enter a pattern (following a set of rules to enter the stitches on lines) to generate a PDF chart of that pattern. Please go give it a whirl!

Please also post feedback, questions, suggestions, and what-not as comments to this post. We know that not every stitch one could want is represented, we know that the user interface (entering the pattern by the rules… gack) leaves something to be desired, we know that PDF isn’t everyone’s favorite output format. What could we do above and beyond what’s there now? Is this tool helpful at all, what would make it more so? Keep those postcards and letters coming!

So one day I decided that Calorimetry might be a solution to my lifelong search of a headwarmer that gets along with my hair. I also had the perfect yarn for the project – so I thought. It was the awesome thick-thin Italian merino that I got at School Products in NY. It was so thick-thin that I couldn’t find anything appropriate to make with it. But I so loved the colors. So I made it. I stayed up late so I could finish it all in one night.

Unfortunately, it isn’t what I’d been looking for all these years. It turned out REALLY big and my wacky hair just stuck straight out the back. Very strange looking (not so much in this picture, but trust me!).

(like my new glasses?!)

I started looking for other uses for the item. Christina warned me against this usage, but I thought I’d try it anyway – bandeaus are, after all, all the rage these days (see here – scroll down – and here).

Finally, after seeing Ava trying to carry her trucks around in it like a hammock, I decided to sew up the sides and attach the tips. She now has a very lovely (and expensive) truck purse!

(notice the backward Winnie the Pooh bib meant to simulate a cardigan – too bad she won’t let me knit her a real cardigan!)

This is the gift I’m *giving* my mom for Christmas. Ahem. Yes, Christmas.

It is a reversible cable wrap. The cables look the same on the front and back! To be continued…

Chapter 8

By the time the Grumler got me through morning traffic to the Uptons, it was going on eleven. The phonebook map put the All The Way on a street with a name longer than it near a couple of arteries, and it did indeed turn out to be a strip-mall. The lot was maybe quarter full already. I parked, and started looking for my establishment.

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I returned today from a trip to sunny and warmer Santa Clara, CA. I brought a sock as my travel companion (in addition to several co-workers). I finished the first sock on the airplane today. Here it is:

I’m just past the cuff on the second sock and will hopefully be done soon. The pattern is fun and quite easy to memorize.

The pattern is Monkey and the yarn is Claudia.

After $85 and a new set of sparkplugs, I was finally able to return home yesterday. And my reward…my Knit Mitt Kit had arrived, yay! I’m so pleased with it. The bag is just adorable and I’m really excited to make the pattern she sent. It’s for some very cute pirate mittens. And there was chocolate in there too, which I’ve hidden away from my sneaky, chocolate-fiend mother, so hopefully there will be some left for me when I get home from work today. Many thanks go out to my swap buddy, Jan. Thank-you, thank-you, I love it!

And now, for some pictures. Here’s one of the bag with a small furry creature in it, for scale:

Here is a close up of the interior of the bag, just because the pattern is so cool and to show off the handy pockets and nice decorative strap:

Here is the full kit, including needles, markers, black and cream yarn, wool detergent, chocolates (!), pirate mitten pattern, and a cute sheep card:

I even managed to find a good use for the box the kit came in. Yay mittens!

Chapter 7

Beauty sleep seemed not to help me. What with my little remembrances of my assailant and benefactor, quite the opposite. It only hurt a bit by now, or a bunch if I forgot and touched it. A guy like me could depend on this kind of memento every job.

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I messed up on my formatting comment containing 6 things, so I’m just making a new post.
Ooh this is fun, especially because I am a weirdo. My six things.

1. Lightening freaks me out and I’ve been known to hid e in small closets during storms.
2. I love potatoes. Most any kind is a friend of mine . I love them so much that Devon once was teasing me and asked me in my sleep what my favorite kind was. I’m told I replied, “Yukon Gold.” I hope to own a potato shack named “Spud’s” one day.
3. When ever I leave a room with a door I tend to leave the door at a 45 degree angle. Never knew I did this until Devon busted me.
4. I hate eating and drinking sounds. Please, don’t slurp or crunch near me!
5. I have a strange obsession with shows about crime and in particular serial killers. And then I get freaked out and can’t go to sleep.
6. I hate cold fruit. Fruit should be eaten at room temperature not from the fridge.

Well I finally decided to check the mail today and I had a notice from the post office that they were unable to deliver a package. A package??? Did I order yarn that I forgot about???? I usually have my stuff shipped to work…wait for it…..MITT KITT! Must be! I sent my pal both US and Canadian addresses. I rushed to the post office, picked up a tidy package wrapped in brown paper and promptly tore it to pieces in the car in the parking lot.
THIS is what I got… (sorry! The file size too big for the blog and I am too lazy to take new pictures or modify the ones I have!)

For immediate gratification, here is my cat attempting to filch some yarn! CAUGHT!!

The bag is BEAUTIFUL…it has awesome colours, 2 inside pockets AND a zipper pouch (which by the way, contained delicious CHOCOLATE!). The pattern is for felted mittens with cables, and my pal put some “local” stuff into it. The pattern is Canadian and the yarn is an east coast staple for felting. My pal turns out to be from Nova Scotia…so cool! Anyway, I LOVE my kit, and wanted to start right away on the mittens, but instead I ate the chocolate! That is why I was so prompt in taking pictures…I wanted to demolish that chocolate bar and wind that yarn!!!

Anyway, the KMKS was a success! I had a great time doing it and ended up with two super pals! Thanks so much, Valerie!

Since I have tendonitis and can’t knit much, I haven’t been posting much. The fact that I finish about 1/4″ on Kris’s mitten linings every other day is not very interesting. So instead, I will blog about my 6 weird things.

1. I like to catalog. Capturing as many inane details as possible about an object is great fun – well, for me anyway! This shouldn’t be surprising as I am a Librarian (by trade if not by degree!).

2. I like German heavy metal. I can only understand about every fourth word, but it’s the music I like!

3. I like to host dark chocolate tastings at work. The rest of the librarians I work with don’t mind, so I guess it’s not that weird.

4. I own the tools to almost every type of crafting there is – knitting, crochet, basketweaving, doll making, scrapbooking, sewing, quilting, stamping, felting, paper making, origami (okay this only requires paper, but I have a lot of it!), beading – you name it, I have tried it! Perhaps this is more obsessive than weird…

5. I love B movies. There’s nothing like a bad Godzilla movie on Saturday morning!

6. I’m sure Kris can think of a sixth thing that is weird about me, but I need to get back to making dinner!

This is a little delayed, but my mitt kit was completed, sent, and received by my pal!

So I went with my quirky idea of knitting a bag that would look like the project it would tote around. I started knitting with some Lopi and just shaped as I went along. I used a lot of purple and some other earthy colours because that is what my pal liked. Here’s what happened…

I think it turned out rather well. This is also the first time I’ve ever done colour work in the round, and it affected the way it felted. Because where the “argyle” diamonds were was thicker with yarn, it seemed to felt more, and shrink slightly faster. This caused me to have to hand felt the purple sections further to make it turn out more uniform.

I might mention that Beth was less than supportive when I told her the mitten/bag idea. She immediately went out and found a *hilarious* picture (recall: this post). Well, to humour her…

I sent the bag, stuffed with yarn, Godiva chocolate, two sets of needles, Burt’s Bees hand balm, embroidery needle, a little badge, and the pattern to Eunny’s Annemoi Mittens. My pal received it 2 days later and sent a lovely email thanking me for the kit. She loved it! I’m glad I got such a nice pal! Thanks, Shelley!

I’m just waiting on my kit now. Who knows where it was sent from, so I just have to be patient. More to come…

This weekend, while others were having fun in Seattle, or preparing to go to the sunny west coast, I tried my first crocheted provisional cast on for a toe-up sock:

Then I started knitting a cabled sock pattern that I didn’t like, and took it all out. And there you have it, the most boring story ever told on this blog. To top it all off, I think I forgot to turn on the flash for the pictures.

I did manage to finish one Natalya handwarmer, the pattern of choice for my daughter and her friends. They seem to have an endless appetite for handwarmers, which I do not quite understand, but which I am happy to fulfill when I can.

And, I finished the first Oak Ribbed Sock. I learned that I probably won’t use the German Twisted Cast-On for a sock cuff again. It just isn’t stretchy enough. And, there is really too much purple in the sock for it to be called “Southwest.” Disregarding these quibbles, though, I really like it. And this pair will be for me – ha!

And life goes on.

Well, my Nerdy friend tagged me with the 6 weird things dealio. Oh, how can I possibly narrow it down to six! Here goes…

1. I can almost never knit the project twice. All those times I’ve knit something as a gift and said “I think I’ll make one for myself.” I lied! It will never happen.
2. I am a pretty serious sleepwalker/talker. Yes, there are several hilarious stories floating around for my embarrassment.
3. I haven’t read a (non-knitting) book since I started knitting and had a baby 3 years ago.
4. I really like having ice cream for breakfast (though I don’t do it much anymore).
5. I tend to make words and phrases up but most people chalk it up to me being Canadian.
6. I have a strange affection for office supplies – like the smell of scotch tape and the sound of a paper cutter. The first year Nick and I were dating, he bought me a big basket fill of pens, pencils, post-its, etc for my birthday… and I knew he was that one.

So now, I’m supposed to rope 6 others in to disclosing their oddities. I’ll make it easy on myself and tag contributors of this blog!

1. Sherry
2. Kristen
3. Christina
4. Olivia
5. Kira
6. Dharma

Let’s see what you’ve got!

And to finish off, here is one sort-of-knitting-related picture.

I got a letter from Vogue Knitting asking me to subscribe to the magazine. Ava snatched it out of my hands and put the free pattern up on the fridge asked me to help her tape the big color foldout on her bedroom wall.

Chapter 6

It’s hard to wake after getting beat up: nothing makes any sense, and it still hurts a lot. I smelled like gasoline and dirty laundry, wherever I was, and it was cramped and dark, I was lying scrunched up, somebody needed to stop ringing the doorbells so close to my head.

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Chapter 5

The Grumler is a nice car if you like wide-open spaces, extremes of speed and braking, and driving through brick walls, but a horrible car if you like a smooth ride, air conditioning, listening to the radio, or connecting with your fellow man other than choppy hand signals. It got me there and back, though, and I needed that now.

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I started working on Branching Out back in July then put it away for some reason. Probably had something to do with it being July! Although I’d picked it up a couple of times, I just couldn’t force myself to finish. It has been sitting, about half done, for quite some time. The yarn is my own hand spun, described here.

Last week I decided that it was time to finish. So I did.

I also decided that since the scarf is brown and purple and pink and none of my coats are any of those colors, I needed to buy a new one. So I did.

Although the bag has been completed for a little over a week, I just finished packing everything together tonight.

My pal lives in PEI and expressed interest in super-warm mitts. She also said that she likes green and purple and jewel tones. For the project bag, I used Berroco UltraAlpaca (50% wool, 50% alpaca) and this pattern I came across using Knitting Pattern Central. I really love the way it turned out. The texture, the shape, everything. I may have to make one for myself!

I guess lining felted bags is becoming my “thing” – I can’t bear to make one without a lining anymore. It is quite easy and adds so much. It was pretty risky getting a fabric with similar colors and a pattern, but I think it worked out well. If my pal doesn’t like it, she can always remove it! Though it is extremely hairy and ugly on the inside – I did a lot of trimming on the public side.

Although I decided pretty early that I wanted to send the pattern for the thrummed mittens from the Winter 06 IK, it took me a long time to select the yarn. I finally found this lovely worsted weight wool – Classic Elite Renaissance. It isn’t quite jewel tones, but close. I wanted a multi-color yarn and white roving instead of plain yarn and multi-colored roving. At one point I thought of Kool-Aid dying some of my roving but that urge quickly passed!

And finally, here are the goods. The kit includes the bag, the yarn, the roving, the pattern, a set of Brittany needles, a cute measuring tape (that I found at a toy store during Christmas shopping!), some Chibi darning needles (my new favorite thing), and a role of awesome raspberry cream cookies from IKEA. I hope my pal likes it!!!

The pre- and post- felting pictures are here.

I have been wandering through other blogs to find activities to inspire me in my knitting, and have found two. The first is a rather casual knit-along called Knit Green Socks. This is my natural inclination anyway, so I’ve downloaded the green sock icon and am ready to go. I, of course, have green yarn in my stash, and have decided to indulge myself by using my Claudia Hand-Painted, in Jungle.

I’m thinking I’ll do the Yarrow Ribbed Sock from Knitting Vintage Socks, a ribbed sock with a German Heel and a French toe.

The second activity I found appealed to me because I found myself stiff after sitting around knitting over the holidays. It may be age, but sadly I have lost my ability to sit for long periods of time. So, I have signed up for Yarn-A-Go-Go‘s Runagogo, designed to get knitters off their behinds. The goals is to run/walk/swim 100 miles more than usual by April Fool’s Day. So far, I’ve done 17.5 miles. And, I feel less stiff and ready to knit more! Again, I added the logo to the website, just to prove I’m really serious.

In other spare moments, I’m knitting up some Interlacements Tiny Toes yarn (Color 213 Southwest) into a pair of Oak Ribbed Socks, again from Vintage Socks. I have decided that one of my goals for the year is to knit at least 14 pairs of socks. These will be number 2.

Clearing the cache, so to speak, so I can move on to new projects. I finished the thrummed mittens, and put them on the chair by the door to be delivered to the recipient, Emily’s boyfriend Hans. He is, you may remember, the one who does not think they are too girly for him at all.

I was running out of blue roving, so started substituting black in the left mitten. The black shows up much more starkly in the picture than it does in real life. These ended up taking less than one skein of Lamb’s Pride worsted, and small bits of roving. The roving makes the inside much softer than the Lamb’s Pride would feel.

Chapter 4

Stash and I plodded around the building, looking for anything further: garage, garbage, halls, cleaning rooms, all came up with no Frau Sofakissen, and no clues. Ed eventually regained consciousness, and upgraded to frozen peas.
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Chapter 3

The suit ducked back from the elevator to cruise, I got after him through the doors. The elevator foyer opened onto a long empty hall of doors left and right, my guy pounding off left. I wheeled after him, he had enough start to get around the corner at the end of the hall and slip into the fire stairs. Before I could follow him around the corner, Sofakissen brought me up short. “Mister Spline! Come quickly!” She was yelling, loud, loud for a mouse that size. She was at the other end of the long hallway, at an open door at the end, and she was standing over a bundle on the floor, she waved me to come, then bent over the bundle.
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Check it out!

A week ago, I posted about my single items, and the need to make partners. Since then I’ve made a lot of progress! I finished the blue cornflower mitts, but sent them off to their recipient before I got a picture. Trust me, they’re done. I also decided I had no motivation to finish the multi-colored mitten. It looks cool, but isn’t that warm or comfy, so off the list it goes. Here is the rest of the lot.

These are my first socks of the year, green cotton crew socks for Zoe. Her favorite socks heretofore have been a red pair that I knitted before I started blogging. They are embarrassingly easy to make — simple ribbing with short row heel and toe. She’s been asking for a pair just like them in green. The yarn is the same brand, Katia Mississippi.

Old Socks	New Socks

I’m still working on the thrummed mittens, and have finished approximately 1.3 mittens. There was some debate about whether or not these will be too girly for Hans. Emily said yes, but we discovered her ulterior motive was to keep them for herself. Hans says, nah, they’re not too girly at all and he’ll wear them proudly.

In addition, I whipped up a pair of mittens for the three-year-old son of one of Emily’s friends. They were having trouble finding black mittens in a small size. These little itty bitty mitts went really fast — about 2 hours each.

And then I even had time to whip up a Noro hat and relax.

Chapter 2

Since I wanted to keep my ancient Grumler in one piece, I casually suggested we take the subway to the Bonneville. At that hour, there was room to offer a lady a seat, and have one yourself. Without really looking at her bag, her hands flicked in and back out with a small square of burnt orange, began rhythmically fidgeting.
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