robknits

Getting back to my needles

     The knitting meet-ups here have helped get me back into knitting mode and out of my stuck-without-a-project rut.  I did need something relatively simple, something to knit on autopilot but as I have said I got stuck when I thought of socks, immersed as I was in my new sandal-friendly environment.  But there was a sudden breakthrough.

     First, I fell in love with the Chevrolace sock pattern from Knitty's Winter 07 issue.  Not sure how I missed it the first time around.  Knew immediately that I want to use the Dream in Color Smooshy yarn that I have in the Wisterious colorway.  (The second from the left in this line-up of last summer's sock yarn splurge.) I couldn't start right away though since the Smooshy is not wound.  So winding that is on the do-next list.  (The other yarns in the picture, from left to right, are Cherry Tree Hill Sockittome in Moody Blues, Lisa Souza Sock! in Mother of Pearl, and Schaefer Anne in Mint Caramel Frappe.  All awaiting the perfect project.  I don't like the self-designed pattern I started with the Anne.)

     Sock-yarn blankets were also on my mind, as a way of providing a continuing mindless project.  The problem was I couldn't help trying to plan the colorwork on a mitered project, which was kind of beside the point.  Finally, I picked up one of the afghan or Tunisian crochet hooks I have, one too small to make a nice fabric out of heavier yarn, and started experimenting with bit of leftover sock yarn.

      I can't stop. 

     I love the woven look you get with afghan/Tunisian crochet.  And I love the motion involved.  But the relationship among needle size, yarn size, and fabric is quite different in Tunisian crochet than in knitting.  I am using a size G Susan Bates hook.  That's a 4 or 4.5 mm size hook, the equivalent of a size 6 or 7 needle, that I am using with fingering weight yarn.  In knitting that would get me a lacy fabric.  In Tunisian crochet, that gets me an OK blanket-weight fabric, but I really could have used an even larger hook to get a drapier fabric!  That's why I ordered such huge hooks to experiment with fabrics for jacket patterns.  As you can see, I am working in broad color groups with a few contrasting colors thrown in.  The result? I need to knit more socks to get more leftovers!  That helped reignite my interest in knitting socks too.  Isn't that funny?

I don't think I like the brown/copper bit I used in the blue-ish strip.  And I think putting together lots of strips will look as uninspiring (to me, but then, it's my blog) a grannie-square afghan.  So, I think I am going to make strips of varying lengths and then somehow put them together with navy blue sections, in a quilt-like kinda way.  Til then, though, I am just going to make strips of left-over sock yarn.

     So in addition to knitting Chevrolace out of the Smooshy Wisterious, I am also going to start a pair of all-stockinette socks with the  Apple Laine Apple Pie sock yarn in the Best Friends color Kim gave me as a going-away present.  I was also able to look back through the blog to discover what stitch pattern I had used on the Moving socks, done in Paton Kroy Eclipse.  So I can work on sock #2 there.  So with a sock yarn leftover project in motion, and 3 sock projects about to take off, I appear to be back in my basic knitting status.  But I still have to find the following:

• More sock yarn is hiding somewhere.  Missing is my stash of red sock yarns, including the gorgeous Mysterious yarn I bought from the Knitting Zone.  There is an APB out for red sock yarn on Inspiration Drive.
• The Campanula WIP.  I know I saw it somewhere.
• My knitting notions in a clear cosmetic bag.  Now THAT is critical.

Sock!

      In the singular.  My moving-therapy sock #1 was completed just a few minutes ago.  Using Patons Kroy in Winter Eclipse, purchased for very little during, I think, a Herrschnerrs sale. Notice the other all important items sharing the top of the cart:

• Painter's tape.  Good for labeling items going into the freezer and anything else that needs a label.
• Two cat brushes, because of course Maggie will only allow herself to be brushed by the pink one and Frannie only tolerates the blue one. 
• A catnip mousie
• Pencils for marking pattern repeats.
• A knitting magazine.

Anyway, this sock is also a bit long.  That's the second pair in a row that ended up too long.  I am going to cast on right away for Winter Eclipse #2, and will try making that one shorter.  I am also casting on for sock #2 immediately to counteraffect the news that apparently the electricity in the house I want to buy in San Antonio was installed by monkeys.  I tried some alcohol but I think it's gonna take some sock knitting before I calm down.

      We interrupt this knitting blog for some cat cuteness.  First, as all folks who share their home with cats know, if you make a pile of something it requires a cat.  Moving, of course, produces lots of piles.  As I was trying to wash every piece of clothing I own, this resulted.   Maggie appears to understand that her role in the house is to produce moments of outrageously sweet cuteness I disavow in all other parts of my life.  Oh, and then she did this:

Yup.  Discovered ice cubes.  And nope, she sure wasn't supposed to be on the counter.

   Frannie is sharpening her skills of invisibility, except at feeding time and when she has to be brushed.

     Ok, back to fiber fun.  I figured out how to pack a spinning wheel today.  It included a big box, lots of towels, and whatever yarn was still lying around in that room.  And I may have gotten a bit carried away when I prepared for a couple of months of knitting while packing, moving, and unpacking:

Ya think? The yarn for 9 or 10 pairs of socks, a shawl, and 3 sweaters in progress.  I think that's about 2 years worth of knitting for me.  I think I should make it til I am unpack.  Face it, Rob, this is a security blanket in its raw state.  That would have been a cute moving project -- random skeins of things knit into a security blanket. 

Knitting night/ Sock night

     A fun night was had by all at the Centre Hall Public Library yesterday.  Their knitting group -- the Penns Valley Area Knitting Group --  meets the second and fourth Thursday of every month, while the State College group meets the first Thursday.  The half-hour drive to Centre Hall is well worth it and I am going to try to remember to go to my more local State College group next week.  I appear to have created Lacy Mock Cable desire in the group. Several went home to Google the pattern and I have promised to bring it in to the group in two weeks.  Here's a picture of my latest lacy Mock Cable, in some handpainted Opal.  It does remind me that I do not like the way the colors arrange themselves -- flashing, I guess this is -- and in fact I like the way the lacy mock cable kind of mixes the color up.  As usual, this is working up quickly but I do have to remember to wind other hanks of sock yarn into two separate balls so I can do both socks at the same time. 
     Great socks last night at the group.  Nancy was working on a great sock pattern from One Skein Wonders that really showed off a handpaint sock yarn with a slip stitch design.   Barb had her sock project too -- a gorgeous rendition of Knitty.com's Monkey sock by Cookie A.  I had gone right past that pattern since I really dislike the yarn in the picture.  Barb had one done in a gorgeous red colorway of Tess's Designer Yarns sock yarn that she bought at Maryland Sheep and Wool.  I immediately decided that I would use the Monkey pattern for one of the new sock extravagances that arrived over the weekend. 
     Yes, the loot arrived.  My mind is shying away from the total cost of a luxury sock yarn spree, but after years of buying Kroy, Blauband, etc on sale I just could not resist.  So here is the line up of beauties, or, as I named the picture, my sock loot :
     From left to right, Cherry Tree Hill Sockittome, in Moody Blues.  Dream in Color Smooshy, in Wisterious.  Lisa Souza Sock! in Mother of Pearl, and Schaefer Anne in Mint Caramel Frappe.  I can't wait.  The sock I am working on now has taken over all my knitting time, since work has been intensive and I have been coming home looking for relatively mindless knitting.  So while the Lacy Mock Cable does work up quickly, it is also working up quickly because I have not been working on the Japanese Feather stole, the Campanula cardigan, or, of course, the wool and mohair Bamboozled.  As Stephanie pointed out, her cardigan is moving slowly because she is not working on it!  This weekend I am hoping to finish the back of the Campanula.  And wind this sock yarn, each skein into two balls.  One of them will be Monkey, I think, reworked for a toe up sock.  One maybe.... Wendy's new  River Run sock or something like it. 
     Speaking of socks, I just couldn't resist and fantasized that it was mild enough to wear my running shoes with an actual pair of socks (I really live in sandals but...).  So I put on the finished pink socks.  Loved 'em, but since I couldn't find the second running shoe and then admitted it was going to be in the 80s and humid (central PA at the end of July, after all), I took it off and put it back in the drawer.  After admiring it, of course.

Zen calm (and FO addendum)

     Well, hardly. 

But progress is being made on Campanula, and on Bamboozled.

I have wanted to start something else.  Both of these projects are sweater sized, which means they will take me a while.  Of course I do have two pairs of almost finished socks on needles.  It suddenly occurred to me that -- ta da!  -- I do NOT have to knit them until I run out of yarn.

A mindbending realization! Since I make my socks toe up, I can do that, but I don't have to do that.  So since I am bored with the wool-cotton socks I start almost a year ago (gee, wonder why I am finding them boring) I completed a K1P1 rib at the top of one, am about to do that to the other, and will bind them off today.  Again, TA DA!  I will have an FO to show off tomorrow.  I will do the same for the other pair of socks as well -- the ones done in the Regia Line Step beige. 

     What I really want to do is another rectangular shawl.  I love wearing the Scotch Thistle, and so want more.  The next one though will be a bit longer than the Thistle.  So I am trying to NOT look at patterns, and instead look at the stash and work from there.  Of course too many possibilities are occurring so I haven't yet cast on for anything.  But after finishing the two pairs of socks, that is going to go on the needles next.
     I still feel funny about posting about my latest crash.  I am not interested in writing a blog about attention issues.  But since this is a blog about progress in creative projects, and I do them (mostly) in bouts of huge energy interspersed with moments of being overwhelmed, those crashes and recoveries will reoccur here.  I am aiming now for smooth and steady.

Addendum: FO  I did in fact finish the pink socks, using Zimmermann's sewn bind off.  Here they are.  Started in June 2006, finished July 11, 2007 (oops.).  Yarn: Meilenweit Color Fun, a cotton, wool, nylon blend.  Pattern: my own toe up basic sock, using a garter rib pattern for the leg.

    And just for fun, more in the continuing saga of Maggie's issues with weaving.

New project

    For a minute there, I thought Robbyn had posted a picture of my swatch!  Both of us wrestling with the "what next,"  now similar swatches in similar stitches in similar colors... add the similar names and you've got an entry for the "Separated at Birth" column.  Here's my version of the swatch.  This is in the blue-ish teal Kid Classic I rediscovered in the stash in what the Bamboozled pattern calls dot stitch.  The RS rows are a staggered K3 P1, and the WS rows are purled.  I had to go down to a size 7 needle to get a fabric I liked so I ended up with a gauge of 4.75.  I cast on and started knitting the Bamboozled tunic.  I really like this yarn.  They don't have a huge range of colors available right now, which is OK since I have to work my way through that huge stash of aran-weight yarn that I already have.  But a very very nice yarn.  Here's the beginning of the Bamboozled lace-panel tunic.  The yarn is not as blue as this appears on my screen.  I have to keep track of which row I am on for the center lace panel as well as for the dot stitch, so I think I am going to keep the row counter you see for the lace panel and add one for the dot stitch.  Since I am doing fine on the lace and ... ahem.. have to correct the last row of dot stitch.  Forgot to purl across.
     Speaking of stash, this has been next to my computer and I fall in love with the colors in this yarn every time I look at it.   This is Elann's Peruvian Collection brand Highland Wool in Forest Glade.  I didn't think I would be able to get the colors right and it's not perfect -- the green is more of a forest green -- honest, there's no teal in this yarn!  That bronze heather in with the green is just gorgeous.  The label calls for 5 stitches to the inch.  Of course the pattern I would love to use with this calls for more of the yarn than I have, and so far I haven't found any more.  So this is still waiting for its pattern.
     I also recovered some yarn from an ancient UFO.  I found the unused skeins of the yarn below, called Elysee by a company called W. West Designs.  I still have the receipt from the Black Sheep in Madison WI.  I bought this yarn 16 years ago (but that still does not make it the oldest yarn in the stash!).  I had a pullover knit in the round in a double twisted stockinette done up to the separation for the armholes.  So a few days ago I frogged the sweater, wrapped the yarn around my niddynoddy to make a skein, and soaked it in tepid water.  Hung it up with some plastic hangers hanging on the bottom of the skein for a slight bit of weight.  it looks great.  Then I weighed it to figure out how much I have and I am suprised -- I have enough for all kinds of sweaters.  The label calls for 4 st to the inch, so I am looking at patterns in that weight.  One possibility -- the Garden Gate cardigan that I could not finish with the other recovered-Madison yarn, since I did not have enough of that one.  So I may try it again.
     And finally, I kept going on the little bias lace scarf and am enjoying it.  So brave!!! I am doing it without markers for each of the five repeats.  Beginning to strut my stuff as a lace knitter on this very simple pattern.

Verde que te quiero verde

 

Green how I want you green.
Big hoarfrost stars
come with the fish of shadow
that opens the road of dawn.
The fig tree rubs its wind
with the sandpaper of its branches,
and the forest, cunning cat,
bristles its brittle fibers.
But who will come? And from where?
She is still on her balcony
green flesh, her hair green,
dreaming in the bitter sea.

    The second verse, translated, of one of my favorite poems, by Federico Garcia Lorca.  You can find the entire poem in English and in its original Spanish at poets.org. I actually don't respond much to poetry, but love Lorca.  Many of his poems have titles that refer to musical forms, particularly to various forms of flamenco, such as saetas or cante jondo.  This one is called Romance sonambulo.  The title, translated, more or less and not very poetically,  is "A Sleepwalking Ballad" -- "Sonambular Ballad"?  -- but the tonality of it in Spanish is very compelling.  Anyway, Lorca was a musician and artist as well as a poet, and I hear the music in his poems.  I prefer poetry in languages other than English, because then the sound is what strikes me first.
     Since we are buried here in the evidence of a winter storm -- snow and ice -- I suppose it is not surprising that I find myself thinking wistfully of green.  Everything is closed here, including -- grudgingly -- the university, so I am home.  And I found a remarkable list of greens here: aqua, green, Caribbean sea, cross country green, forest glade, moss, sage, typhoon, teal, pine tree, celadon... plus a few with no names.  Unlike Lorca's green, none are associated with death. Much more mundane -- all of them can be found in my stash.  And all but the pine tree, sage and celadon are aran weight yarns.  So now I am spending my unexpected time off trying to match ideas, designs and patterns with yarns, their weight and the yardage I have.  Always a frustrating experience.  I am in the mood for something with lots of texture, something gansey-like, but most of the patterns I have result in sweaters that will be either 1 or 2 inches too tight or 6-8 inches too big.  So I creating charts instead -- what I have in my stash, including yardage, and the aran-weight sweater designs I have been admiring and that will produce a sweater in a size I could wear.  I am hoping a few find their mates.  This involves a lot of online searching, since some of the patterns don't give a standard weight for the yarn used and give the gauge over the pattern (thanks, IK), or others don't give the yardage per skein of the yarn called for.
     I did email Interweave Knits, pointing out that it was impossible to figure out what gauge Reynolds Soft Linen yarn calls for.  It is used in Veronique Avery's Dollar and a Half sweater in the new issue.  They give the gauge over a lace pattern, and is so new there is no information about it online, not even on the Reynolds Yarn site.  Turns out it is 5/in.  The forest glade mentioned above can be knit to that weight, so perhaps it will be a version (definitely edited) of the Dollar and a Half sweater. 
     The patterns using aran weight yarn speaking to me most at the moment include Crystal Palace's  Bamboozle Lace Pattern tunic ,  the Norah Gaughan fitted aran cardigan from Interweave Knits Winter 01/02, a shortened version of Gaughan's Hex coat from her book Knitting Nature, and a pullover from Knitters Winter 03 called It's On the Tab.  That one is marked a "man's sweater."  It is a cabled pullover with a nice tab front and collar, and since there are no penises on it at all, I suppose there is nothing inherently masculine about it.
     If you know of an aran-weight pattern that you find particularly interesting, let me know what it is.  I have at least 5 batches of some sort of green aran-weight yarn waiting to be knitted.

Home again/Fiber tourism in Seattle

     Home again after 3 professionally and yarn-rich days in Seattle (and two days of travel).  The conference (American Libraries Association) was useful and interesting, and oooh, the yarn shops of Seattle.  Here's the tour:
     On Saturday, after dutifully attending meetings and exhibits at the conference, I met Martha at a store appropriately named Too Much Yarn. Or was it So Much Yarn?  (Interesting Freudian slip on my part, huh?)  Martha, a Maryland-based blogless knitter,  had posted on the Knitting Events forum of Knitters Review that she would be accompanying her husband to Seattle and offering an opportunity for a yarn crawl.  It was great.  I really liked So Much Yarn (and Martha!).  The store is nicely organized.  It is a very busy store on Saturdays, which was really nice to see.  They offer classes, had lots of books, but -- and this was true of the 3 yarn stores I visited in Seattle this weekend -- not a lot of lace weight or fingering yarns, which are my latest passion.  I did find a basket of hand-dyed laceweight there and after changing my mind about which color to buy about 12 times, purchased one skein (1460 yards) of Prism Custom Dyed Lace Weight wool in the Periwinkles colorway (obviously, if you superimpose a clock on the picture of the yarns, it is the one at 11).  It is a new yarn for So Much Yarn, and I was officially pronounced the first buyer.  The content on the label says "100% wool," and it is a very soft 2-ply.  I also bought Evelyn A. Clark's Fiber Trends pattern Field of Flowers, a square lace shawl, and two small packages of beads.  Before I met Martha, I found another bead shop on the same avenue, and bought two vials of lovely green stone beads.
     Martha and I then tried to walk to Hilltop Yarns, which was only about 2 miles away, but it turns out it was 2 miles straight up!  Queen Anne hill is a very serious hill. 
     On Monday, after finishing a whole day of Sunday meetings,  I figured out some bus routes and went to the University district to Weaving Works.  Be still my heart.  I left the mortgage money there.  Not so much on yarn -- 5 skeins of Cascade 220, at 12 and 1 on our imaginary clock/picture -- but in the weaving section of the store.  There were all the books I had been looking at in catalogs, there for me to thumb through.  I bought two of Leslie Voiers'  excellent, self-published spiral-bound workshops books: Conversation and Notes on Log Cabin and Winding Multi-Colored Warps with a Warping Paddle.  Just reading them later in the hotel room resolved a number of weaving mysteries for me!  I had previously bought her Plain Weave is Anything But Plain.  Together these will be a substantial weaving education for me.
     I also bought the new Evelyn Clark Fiber Trends shawl pattern Spinner's Lace Shawl, even though the lace pattern is called Spider Lace and the border is called Spider in a Web.  The names appear to be metaphorical.  If anyone sees a spider in the pattern, do NOT tell me -- I am seriously arachnephobic.  I think I also chose some other patterns, though they might still be in the suitcase (of course I unpacked the fiber first, whaddya think?)
     Four issues of the magazine Weaver's Craft also found their way onto my pile of goodies -- it was SO GREAT to be able to look through them before buying.  Now I need to create some kind of list of which ones I own.
     AND... big splurge... the book Happy Weaving from Vavmagasinet.   Forty projects from back issues of the magazine, lots of them for 4-harness loom, lots of which I want to make. 
     As for the Cascade 220 I bought there.... neither of my local shops carries Cascade 220.  And one colorway leapt off the shelves and clung to my neck.  It is a a gorgeous heather in, of course, green.  Colorway 9451, to be exact, because there were two other green heathers on either side of it.  Now, honestly, did I need another worsted-weight green yarn?  Well, yes.  Why?  Well the two that have been residing in the stash for a considerable time are not quite the same.  The Elann Peruvian Collection Highland Wool is a sort of olive heather that I like knit at 5 st to the inch.  The Brown Sheep Handpaint Cross Country blue-green is a single and a solid  that I have never been able to permanently associate with a sweater idea.  Thus I managed to justify buying more blue-green worsted weight yarn, but this time at least I am going to swatch the Cascade 220 with a particular sweater pattern in mind.  Oh, yeah, I also have some dark moss green Froehlich Bergschaft yarn, which is destined for a gansey pattern.  Oh well.  My mom told me it is ok to have a favorite color.
     I didn't realize Acorn Street Yarns was so close to Weaving Works, and didn't get there.  I did drop my Weaving Works goodies at the hotel, and found out which bus to take up Queen Anne Hill to Hilltop Yarns.  Martha had told me all her Seattle-aware knitting friends raved about Hilltop, so I took myself off on another tour of Seattle.  It is in a lovely interesting neighborhood.  The store's website describes it as occupying a Craftsman mansion.  Craftsman house, yes, mansion, no, though I imagine a house in Queen Anne costs a mansion-worth price.  I was a bit disappointed.  They had very little sock yarn, and 4 or 5 skeins of Lorna's Laces lace weight yarn.  They did have the Colinette sock yarn Jitterbug -- very colorful and very (insanely?) expensive.   Lovely dk weight yarns.  What they did have was a whole room of Rowan yarns.  Neither of my local yarn shops carry Rowan, so it was nice to meet the stuff in person.  Nevertheless, I almost walked out without buying anything.  I did find two more lace patterns -- I bought Evelyn Clark/ Fiber Trends Leaf Lace Shawl and a Eugen Beugler lace pattern published by Knit One Crochet Two in their In Love with Lace series -- the Simply Sensational Scarf.  And then, in love with scarves and shawls made in lace weight fuzzy mohair, I decided to experiment.  I bought two skeins of yarn -- one blue-green (what? It's called Trance Teal, I had to buy it) ball of Kid Silk Haze (at 7 o'clock in the picture) and one lovely multi-colored ball of a similar yarn, Crystal Palace's Kid Mohair in a lovely colorway called Fall Herbs (at 5 and 6 o'clock).  (I must say the Hilltop's practice of sticking their price label directly on top of the name of the yarn is incredibly annoying. )  The idea is to find very very simple lace patterns so that I can use this yarn.  I will probably go insane using it, since I regularly tink back to fix mistakes, but I am going to give it a try.
    On my trip home, three women (traveling separately) were knitting in the airport.  I didn't touch my knitting once, though I had brought two projects with me.  Too cramped on the plane to knit, too tired at night in the hotel room.  Today though I am going to reacquaint myself with my knitting.  Or my weaving.  Or both. It's nice to be home.  Though, wow, the restaurants in Seattle....

   

Weekend update

    Here is the truly finished cowl.  I took out the bind-off, frogged the last few rows, and did it again and am much happier with the results.  Just in time too, now that it is cold enough to wear it.  It fits snuggly, like a turtleneck, so I may try another in a looser style as well.
     The second Lacy Mock Cable sock was started last night -- I just couldn't stand not knowing exactly how much longer I could make the first sock, and only seeing one sock growing on the needles.  So I broke the yarn and cast on for the second sock, I think at the right point in the slow color progression Megaboots has.
     In that same frame of mind, I took another skein of Megaboots from the stash and wound off half of it into a separate ball.  It is very pretty yarn, very different from the colorway already on the needles.  Here is an unfocused picture ( What is wrong with my camera? Or is it the photographer?)  I am thinking of using this yarn and a honeycomb pattern for another pair of socks.
     And finally, for her fans... Maggie, seeing pictures were being taken, came over for a portrait.  Her latest accomplishment:  learning to open cabinet doors.  I either have to get some baby locks or move the cat food. 

Help me be strong!

     The last weekend in May is always a momentous one for me, for both happy and sad reasons, marking lots of good stuff in my life and one very great loss.  Mostly, these days, as Memorial Day weekend approaches, I feel the good stuff on Memorial Day weekend and try not to focus too much on the loss. 
    So (after acknowledging all of this) in an effort to emphasize the good and not cry over the difficult, I have chosen to focus instead on a very good -- and very dangerous -- weekend event: the annual yarn sale at my LYS.  Da-da-da-dum.... (I assume you all recognized the opening chords of Beethoven there.) 
     I had convinced myself to not even go.  Never mind that I really like the LYSO.  Never mind that the other woman working the sale was her co-teacher in the lace class and I want to visit.  Never mind that it is out in the country and I like going.  I have so much yarn.  Now, I know a lot of us don't admit that there is such a thing as too much yarn, but I now really really want to get to work with the stuff I've got.
      So... since I am working on the trim for the Shetland shawl (really!) and don't want to inflict on you a picture of the 11th repeat of the pattern, I am going to show you things from the stash that I have decided how to use or that I need help deciding how to use.  The first one belongs in the latter category: here it is, a beautiful conundrum from the stash.  This one.  You've seen it before.  Bought at that same LYSO.  It is gorgeous.  A mill end, thick and thin, this gorgeous glass green with some brown, 3.5 in, and I have 1200 yds.  I think a jacket.  But I have thought that for a while without knowing what to do with it.  The LYSO and I have similar taste, but this time she grabbed the copper color and I grabbed the green (we usually both reach for the green).  She made a poncho.  I don't wear ponchos, though I agree that stockinette will look best.  But... but... I think 3/4 sleeves.  But I can't see the rest of it.  So... any ideas?
     Two other beauties from the stash, that date from my years in Madison, WI, where I learned to knit (or at least, where I relearned to knit as an adult).  Both are 4 st to the inch, both are in blues and violets (whatta surprise) ... and since I was a very new newbie in those days, I don't know how much I have.  Only that the various LYSOs assured me that it was enough for a sweater.  Yeah.  I know.  Who knows how much I have.  Especially a problem since I wear a larger size sweater now than I did 17 years ago.   The one on the left was a luxury yarn by W. West Designs (??) called Elysee, a wool/rayon mix.  The one on the right was a handpainted yarn I fell in love with. I think I swatched it at 4/in, but I have to either find the swatch or do it again.  I have 3 of these hanks.   I also have most of a sweater made of the Elysee (poorly lit picture on the right): made in the round, using a twisted stockinette stitch because I remember thinking it did not have enough body.  I had been knitting for about a year then, by the way.  Anyway, the body of this sweater measures 39".  Not only is that not going to fit now (no how, no way), I kinda doubt it would have fit then.  So I am going to frog this to recover the yarn.  But then I either have to figure out how much I have, or just start knitting!    Do the sleeves last and decide it would work sleeveless? (No.)  Do a vest?  Because in addition to what you see knit into the body of this sweater, I have approximately 6 skeins left.  They only have 60 yds each.  So that's only about 360 more yards of this stuff.   And the back and neck here have not been knit.  So I think I have to do a vest. 
     The other stuff, the handpainted wool on the right, is just gorgeous.  I don't know how much I have, and I don't really want another blue and violet vest.  I could start with that, though,  making this one a cardigan style vest, and see what I have left for sleeves.  Or I could accept that it should be a cardigan-style vest,  and let myself experiment with stitches or design factors.   Any other ideas?   When I designed a raglan v-neck for my size in this gauge on Sweaterwizard, it said I would need about 961 yards of yarn.  I really doubt each hank had 320 yds, don't you?   And the online charts that estimate how much yarn you need for a sweater my size actually double that estimate.  I'm doomed never to use this yarn I have loved for 17 years.  By the way, just to add insult to injury, I just got Norah Gaughan's book Knitting Nature, love several patterns, and don't have the yarn for any of it.  And the LYS sale is starting tomorrow....
     Finally, on the positive side: I just got Big Girl Knits.  I am not sure I qualify as a "big girl" in any direction (OK, I have always qualified as a big girl in one direction), but I certainly don't fit into a lot of published patterns these days.  Big Girl Knits gives great instructions for fitting, especially for using short rows for make some space where I need it even when I am thin (why oh why do most designers assume women don't have breasts?  Many of us do.).   I fell in love with the Sandy Cardigan jacket from Big Girl Knits, though I think I would make the vee neck lower and add a little collar. Anyway, miracle of miracles, it calls for 7 skeins of Noro Kureyon for diagonal panels on the front and back.  And what do I have in my stash but this....  Noro Shinano.  Tweedier with a somewhat less obvious stripe than Kureyon.  I bought it to make a vest (yeah, but I don't usually wear vests).  So, I thought, well, I'll have to go to the yarn sale, because now I need 5 skeins of a coordinating color in Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted.  The sides and sleeves are made in the solid-colored Lamb's Pride.  And then I thought, hmmm.  What if I used the Magpie I bought on sale at the LYS (same LYS) last time I made the mistake of looking in the sale basket?
     The color match could not be better, the oatmeal color of the Magpie perfectly matching the natural in the Shinano. I don't generally match multicolors to lighter colors, but I think I will push myself a little here.  The Magpie is the same gauge as the Shinano and the Lambs Pride.  And the Magpie has only 5 fewer yards per skein than the Lambs Pride and I will need to shorten the sleeves and probably the jacket as a whole (The girls might be big but I am only 5'2" on my taller days)..  So... did I buy 5 skeins of the Magpie?  'scuse me a sec... [She shuffles off to the yarn closet.] YES!  WE HAVE A MATCH.  Amazing -- we actually have an interesting pattern, that will fit with some modifications that are included in the pattern instructions, and we have YARN THAT WILL WORK IN THE STASH.  I am gonna have to mark May 25 on the good-things-happen calendar.

A little surprise, and questions about felines and fiber

  Hi,
     First part of this entry is about fleece, and has a question for folks who work with Coopworth.  The second part of the entry is about cats, and I need some input from cat people.
     Remember the cream/beige/taupe 10 lb Romney fleece I showed you after coming home from MDSW?  Yeah, this one there on the left. I also showed you a couple of locks -- yeah, these on the right.  Well, I did a quickie minimal wash of those locks, just a quick soak in a bit of water and lots of Dawn in the kitchen sink.  A quickie, because I was off, with the mammoth fleece, to Lucy's, where we were going to divide it up.  So I washed the two locks you see on the right, left them on the side of the sink, ran around the house in my usual Keystone Kops effort to get myself out of the house  and got.... this.

   Hmm.  Definitely not beige and taupe.  It still is a very nice fleece, and since it is NOT beige and taupe, I have some new ideas.  I do still think this fleece is going to be used for an afghan or blanket, and that I will separate the different colors and shades.  I might still work with it in its natural colors, or, maybe, use this as a way of experimenting my way into natural dyeing.  And then I have to decide whether to knit it or maybe maybe -- weave it.  Oooh.
     Anyway, the first MDSW fleece project will be to wash and dye the Hatchtown Coopworth.  The sheep who donated the fleece is named Bridget, by the way.  She's the salt and pepper.  And this is what her fleece looks like washed up -- I also just washed one lock of this.  Bridget's lock is on the left, the smaller, brighter one on the right is from Stony Branch Farm's Norah, also a Coopworth.  Anyway, I can't believe what Bridget feels like washed up.  We may have a Coopworth convert here.  In that quick minimal wash, the lock washed up into a very soft cloud.  I swear I could almost spin it just as it is.  Some minimal processing would be a good idea though, and I am trying to decide what.  Just flicking it?  Minimal hand carding into rolags? I love combing, but I don't think I am going to comb this one -- it is just drying out for a more woolen prep.  So those of you who spin Coopworth -- how do you prefer to prepare it?  I am leaning toward just a quick flick.  The plan is to dye it with Cushings Ocean Green, spin a two-ply worsted weight, and knit a sweater.
    OK.  Cat talk.  (Kim saw this entry coming.) I have never had a cat.  I did have lovely old Sam, a black Lab mix rescued from the shelter, who died this past January at a happy old age of 15.  But now, I want a cat.  A kitten.  And I will be setting the search (and pre-adoption approval) in motion this Saturday at PAWS.
   However... I have fiber and yarn everywhere.  And I know it is not only dangerous to my stash but dangerous to a cat.  So, I am beginning to rethink my stash displays, and put things away... which is hard since I love having it on display.  I do have one yarn display that I know will have to change.  Here's a picture.  I do know: 1) no yarn, fleece or roving in open cubbies; 2) the yarn hanging from the hooks is in super easy access from the top of the shelf unit.  So the yarn, etc. in the cubbies and hanging from the pegs is going to go into clear storage containers or into the yarn closet, which will be kept closed.  Are the spindles, etc. in the basket safe?   Do cones of cotton warp need to be hidden away?
    On the other side of the room, I have another Shaker peg rack, but without a storage unit beneath it.  Are these safe?  Will it depend on the cat?  I have one friend who says her cat just ignores all the fiber in the house.  I need one of those!