Postmodern Hausfrau

a whole bunch of pot holders

2011-05-27T10:22:00.004-06:00

Making pot holders has become my go-to project lately when I'm just not quite sure what to do with myself. They are fast, use up scraps, and are infinitely satisfying to crank out. I've also got a few gifty occasions coming up, namely teacher gifts at Fritz's preschool. Here's what I've been up to.

These one's are ok, but why oh why did I use that peach fabric to back them? Sigh.

These ones turned out better. Not only are they a little bigger, but better colours, and I really love the backing fabric. I still have a little more left from making aprons a few years ago.

I'm sure there are many more of these in my future - in fact, it's more than likely that over the next 6 years, every teacher that Fritz and Liesl have will be bestowed with a pair of these.

a few things

2011-05-24T12:23:00.005-06:00

Well, I do believe I'm going to be pregnant for the rest of my life. That's the way it feels at the moment, anyway. I still have a few days to go before I hit my official due date, so my impatience is somewhat unfounded (other than being really sick of being pregnant!)

In the meantime though, I thought I'd quickly post a few things I've made lately. I finished knitting another pair of socks last week. The colours are pretty loud, but I think I'll still wear them a fair bit. This ends the sock knitting rampage for a while, I think.

And for my friend Christine in Australia, here you go! Finally some mittens to keep your hands warm on your bicycle commute.

Hopefully they fit ok, because last night I was comparing my mum's hands to mine, and I couldn't believe how different in size they were! (Mine are big!) I knit these to fit me, imagining the whole time that Christine must have big, muscular hands from blowing glass all the time - so here's hoping!

a handy carrying case

2011-04-22T15:56:00.005-06:00

Ok long story short: Stupid blogger just erased a huge and lovely post on this:

I probably hit a wrong key, but for now, work with me: I'm blaming blogger.

So this is a carrying case for my kids double screen dvd player. It flaps open. It's padded, and is generally super awesome. No more plastic Walmart bag that it came in. Yay!

some finished projects

2011-04-08T13:47:00.005-06:00

Well, March was a rather dry month in terms of ye old blog. I was busy making quite a bit of stuff, including putting on a birthday for a certain five year old, but somehow never found time to post the stuff I've been making.

I finished up the pink socks weeks ago. I really love them. I wish I had a sock blocker so that when I present the finished product on this blog, they would look all professional and sleek. Instead I give you a rumply pair of socks, that actually look great on, but not so great sitting on my kitchen table!

Something else I finished in a big hurry was a scarf for my mum's birthday. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to get a photo of her modelling it last weekend, but whatever... I'm 7 1/2 months pregnant! My mind is clearly elsewhere.

The pattern is the Diamond Scarf by Kristina Larsson. Although I just realized I shot it doubled up, so the lace pattern is completely obscured!. I am not really a fan of knitting lace - even big chunky lace like this. But the pattern was easy to memorize, and in the end, once I got a rhythm going, it went pretty fast. And I love it. And my mum loves it. I knit it out of a really soft hand dyed cotton, the brand of which is currently escaping me. I actually wouldn't mind whipping one up for me too. It's one of those projects that used up a full skein of yarn, and ends up being just the right length. Awesome, and no leftovers.

More blog entries to follow soon I hope! I'm a sock knitting machine these days!

sock love

2011-03-04T14:23:00.005-07:00

Who would have thought I'd be having a major sock knitting jag? I thought I was totally off socks until LBB and I were chatting a week ago, and she mentioned again that someday, learning to make socks was on the agenda. (Like maybe in about 20 years when our kids are grown up and we actually have time!)

Anyway, as you know, I've got yarn stash busting fever. I'd been eyeing 5 or 6 skeins of sock yarn on my shelf, really having no idea what to make with it, until LBB mentioned socks again. I guess socks have not thrilled me in recent years because I really love the idea of toe-up socks, but these always involve a short row heel, and short row heels don't fit me. I think I must have high arches or something, because a short row heel means that the top of the sock is stretched to the point of foot irritation over the top/instep of my foot.

So if I was going to make socks, I set out to find a better way. Enter the toe-up gusset and flap sock, which is really just a cuff-down sock in reverse. I think I've found the answer people! I checked out this tutorial, but it was really all seeming way to complicated, so instead, I stared at this pair of socks for awhile.

I knit them, cuff-down, a few years ago. And they fit we really well. After a few hours of knitting and some basic calculations, this is where I'm at:

And it's good. I've done a try on, and they are comfortable, with lots of room! All I did was take the stitch counts on the old socks, and reverse them. I'm thrilled that I've finally found my perfect sock, and am looking forward to cranking out a few more pairs. Sock knitting was supposed to be my "project between major projects", but it's turning out to be so consuming, and instantly gratifying, that I may be sock knitting for a few more weeks before anything else gets knit around here!

a homemade zamboni

2011-03-02T14:52:00.004-07:00

Well, the skating rink has been a huge success this winter. And we've had the perfect winter for it - really, really cold. I think Stewart has really enjoyed the "art of making ice" and took it one step further a couple of weeks ago. He built a homemade zamboni (a.k.a. a homeboni) and Fritz and Stewart have been out countless time, giving the rink a quick resurface before skating time. I think Stewart used this basic recipe to make one.

And because the weather has been sooo cold, a coating of water freezes in a few minutes, so they've been able to do a couple of passes in one go. At first Stewart tried to convince Fritz that the best way to help was to stand on a snow bank, and handle the hose, but Fritz would have none of that. He gets right in there, and can usually be found with his hand firmly anchored on the zamboni while Stewart tries to pull it evenly across the ice.

If you don't know what a real zamboni is, you can learn all about them here. It's for professional hockey/figure skating rinks. The real ones actually shave a thin layer of ice off before replacing it with a skim coat of water that freezes almost instantly. Anyway, I know it's a bit of stretch calling this a creative effort... but I did sew velcro fastenings to the towel!!!

one week ago...

2011-02-20T16:10:00.005-07:00

One week ago, we were madly cranking out the valentines. Big thanks to LBB who gave us the idea, and explained her method!

It was a really easy, kid-friendly project. I parked myself in between the kids so that I could monitor the glue situation, which frequently spiralled out of control. But they had fun! And they did a lot of it by themselves.

I did some prep: Cut out big hearts from card stock, and then iron-on interfaced some pink quilting fabric so that it was stiff enough to easily cut, and easy for the kids to handle. And did some shopping. Sticky foam hearts and super cheap heart springs - destination: preschool.

They were really fun to make, and we'll do something like it next year, especially since Fritz will be in Kindergarten, and Liesl will have a preschool class of her own. Plus, Fritz did seem really proud of them when he handed out a couple to his teachers. This is the kind of project I thrived on when I was a kid, and I think there will be a lot more of this in the future.

at long last...

2011-02-15T10:00:00.005-07:00

This sweater has been a loooong time in the making. I started it about 18 months ago, and lost steam on it so many times, I can't even count. It spent a lot of time in a half done state, kicking around the basement, even being abused by the kids occasionally. I just couldn't seem to get motivated. But I really wanted to start some new projects, and knew that if I did, this sweater would remain in a heap in some dusty corner. So I got busy, ripped out the yoke which hadn't really been working very well, and got knitting. The funny thing is, it only took me a few hours to finish the whole thing, so I'm not sure what I was dreading. It was easy.

Attempting to shoot the sweater, but Fritz and Liesl had to get in on the action:

Finally, the sweater photo. It fits perfectly, and Stewart loves it. It's already in rotation with the other ones I've made him over the years, which is good! Because his other sweaters are starting to look a bit worn. I knit it out of Louet's Riverstone, which is a really rugged, but not to scratchy feeling wool. I'm thinking the fibre is going to wear really well. The sweater has been worn quite a bit the last couple of weeks, and no signs of any pilling. Hurray!

I'm not sure what I'm going to make him next, but I'm pretty sure it'll be from this book:

It's really hard to find patterns for men's sweaters that aren't over the top with cables, stitch patterns, to many buttons, etc. And I've been informed numerous times by Stewart that the simpler the sweater, the more likely it'll get worn. Why fight it? Knit the simple stuff for guys, and save the interesting stuff for gals and kids. Knits Men Want is the best knitting pattern book for guys I've ever found. The author, Bruce Weinstein, really knows what he's talking about, and the patterns are beautiful, and simple. Stewart's already had a flip through the book, and there are definitely a few contenders in there. Maybe late summer I'll get going on something new for him again - he is my most devout sweater wearer, and wears something I've made for him nearly every day!

fun with scissors

2011-02-12T15:00:00.005-07:00

LBB told me about this book a few weeks ago, and I promptly found it in the library. It's called Creative Paper Cutting, and has a ton of really satisfying really fast projects.

The one that I could most immediately apply around here was taking crepe paper streamers and chopping into them, paper doll style. Ten minutes later, I'd made a couple of streamers to brighten up our hallway.

I'd like to get back to a dollar store soon and get a few more colours. This project makes you start thinking in multiples and there are a ton of other shapes I'd like to try. Party decor will never be the same!

a new sweater for me

2011-02-07T16:17:00.005-07:00

Hurray! A new knitting project on the needles! I really want 2011 to be all about knitting up the yarn stash, and quilting up the fabric stash. As far as yarn stashes go, many knitters would probably find it laughable that I even call my yarn collection a "stash". Because really, if you put aside all the odd balls, I have 5 sweaters worth of yarn that needs knitting. Totally doable.

And my first major knitting project of 2011 is going to be Kerrera. I have some lovely Malabrigo worsted weight that I knit into a hideous sweater about 5 years ago, and promptly ripped it all out, never to see the light of day until about 2 weeks ago! And luckily, I still really love the yarn. This is what I've got done so far.

I also really love the pattern I've chosen. It's by the intrepid Gudrun Johnson, and it's undoubtedly one of the best written patterns I've ever knit. So easy to understand, and as one knitter elsewhere wrote, just when you have a question starting to form - Gudrun answers it. I'm feeling a little quavery about some of the upcoming techniques, but I do really want to keep learning about all the finer points of knitting. I'm alternately scared senseless, and looking forward to knitting a fitted sleeve cap in place, top down, and using short rows with the wrap & turn technique. It's something I've tried many times before, and never gotten quite right, so I hope I can overcome this, and still have my sweater sleeves not come out looking like they've been mangled by a rabid dog!

mitten round up

2011-01-24T16:16:00.006-07:00

I can't believe it's taken me so long to post about these mittens! The green ones were done over a year ago, and promptly sent to LBB, and the purple ones were basically done a year ago, and this morning I sewed in the loose ends.

I've desperately needed mittens for quite sometime, but had completely forgotten about these. So it was kind of nice to discover them in the bottom of a knitting basket and only have about 10 minutes of work on them to get them to wearing condition.

Both mittens were knit with mystery wool dyed and spun by me. I need to do more of this!

a quilt update

2011-01-11T16:50:00.005-07:00

This weekend I found a white flannel sheet at my local thrift shop, sewed a pocket on one end, shoved a slat through it, and hung it in my sewing room. So I now have a great place to plot out my quilt's progress. The only downer is that this flannel has been used and washed for so many years that it's not quite as sticky as it could be. Evidenced by all the squares I keep finding on the floor every time Fritz and Liesl touch it, which is often.

But I'm happy to have it up, and to start figuring out where I need to go with it next. I got a fair bit done during the holidays, but things have been at a bit of a standstill this past week. I've got some orangey/yellow chrysanthemum fabric by Kaffe Fassett that I'm going to make a few crosses out of. And I want to make 2 more of the large squares, widen the whole thing by one more 6" column, and make it a fair bit longer. I'll keep you posted!

I heart cia's palette

2011-01-07T08:57:00.004-07:00

Look what I just got! This is my last fabric purchase for quite awhile. Looking at the way my stash has grown over the last few weeks means that I'd better churn out a few quilts before I entertain setting foot in a fabric store again. Just after Christmas, I made this order from Cia's Palette and had it shipped to my parents holidaying in the U.S. (free shipping!! - and as it happened, they were coming back here within days of receiving it!)

I wish I knew what this all was - I know there is some Moda, and some Kaffe Fassett, but beyond that, I really can't remember what I ordered. But I'm thrilled with it all! I think my favourites are the two top middle prints - they're identical, but in two different colour ways. Most of this is just 1/2 yard cuts, but I ordered a little extra of those two in case I wanted to make a quilt back.

the only sweater I made in 2010

2011-01-05T08:30:00.005-07:00

Undoubtedly, it was a dismal year on the knitting front. I started many projects, but most of them just ended up balled into a plastic shopping bag, and shoved to the back of my closet. This is one of the only knitting things I completed this year.

It was for LBB for Christmas, and it very nearly wasn't finished on time. It did turn out pretty good in the end. I really loved the colour and the yarn was bliss to work with because it was Malabrigo's worsted weight. Pure love. The pattern was the one I used for my pink sweater a year or two ago, written by Amy Swenson. All in all, this sweater is my favourite kind of knitting. Lots of mindless, blissed out knitting with a few spots where you need to concentrate.

I have a giant bag full of frogged burgundy/red Malabrigo. I think I'm going to get going on something for me again, really soon.

what i did yesterday morning

2011-01-03T11:40:00.004-07:00

Well, I'm not sure if I can officially call myself a quilter yet - maybe I'll save that for when I actually finish a quilt. But I did get a good start on my first one. I'm really wild about all the cross/math/plus sign quilts I see on flickr and different blogs. This one is one of my favourites.

These are all 6 inch blocks. In retrospect, I wish I'd made them a bit bigger, because after you take away seam allowances, I've only made a tiny dent in this quilt. I'm planning on throwing in a few 12" blocks to break it up a bit, and make it go faster. 4 blocks for the price of one!

I like the way it's turning out. It might need a couple of hits of orange or yellow yet, but I'm going to save those blocks for near the end. I made a few more blocks this morning... only 50 or 60 more to go.

pot holders

2010-12-27T20:23:00.005-07:00

There has been some making this December! It's been a little sporadic, and some of it has been for gifts, so I haven't been able to chronicle it all on this blog. Last week, Stewart took the kids to see Santa, and I stayed home and whipped these up!

Huge thanks to LBB for telling me all about the technique, working out all the kinks on the ones she made, and giving me the idea in the first place!

They are scrap quilted in a sandwich as you go, with terry cloth on the back side. Perfect for klutzes like me who inevitably burn their hands when baking.

One of the things I'd like to learn how to do for real this year, is quilt. On a blanket scale. Potholders don't count.

a skating rink!

2010-11-24T15:28:00.005-07:00

If you think this blog is starting to seem a little bit neglected in the making department, you're not wrong. That's because...drum roll please... I'm over 13 weeks pregnant! Yep, baby 3 is on its way, and due to make an appearance in late May. So there hasn't been much time for making anything lately (other than creating new life!) Most of my time is spent plotting how to sneak a nap into my day, or trying to find something to eat that I don't find nauseating. A near impossible task some days.

So likely, this here blog is going to chronicle in the next few months a little bit of making stuff, and probably a lot of food stuff, since that's what I seem to be mostly focused on right now.

The biggest thing we've made, and I say we, but it's really mostly Stewart, is a skating rink in our back yard! My only real contribution was helping to tape together two huge sheets of plastic. We really want the kids to learn to skate, and we figured it just wasn't going to happen if we have to drag them down to the local rink every time, especially since it's likely they'll only want to go for a little while at a time to start with. So we are toeing the line, wanting our kids to learn to skate, but desperately trying to avoid becoming hockey parents.

The rink itself is a huge success. The photo doesn't really do it justice. It's about 18 by 30 feet, a nice size for little kids to learn on. Stewart has spend the last couple of evenings flooding it, and with most nights this week hitting -30 C (that's about -22 F), it has had no trouble freezing by morning.

So now we have a rink. This week's mission: get skates!

best chocolate frosting. ever.

2010-11-15T10:20:00.004-07:00

Liesl had a birthday last week and turned 3! She requested a banana cake with chocolate icing, and so I hunted down some new recipes, and got to it. The banana cake... meh. By their very nature, banana cakes really have no choice but to be a 3rd rate version of banana bread, so it was a little heavier than I would have liked.

But the frosting! Oh my! I decided to try a new recipe for that as well, since I really don't have a chocolate frosting in my repertoire than I can say is truly awesome. Here's the link for the one I used, undoubtedly the best chocolate frosting I've ever made, or had anywhere else for that matter.

Most chocolate frosting is way to sweet, or cloying, or gritty tasting/feeling. This one was just right, with maximum chocolatiness. Before I made it, I'd glanced over the ingredients to make sure I had everything. It was only once I got going that I realized this recipe calls for butter in two separate amounts - adding up to a whole lot of butter, not to mention cream. But whatever. At that point I was committed, and I figured this recipe is only getting trotted out a couple of times a year, so what if it's going to give everyone a coronary. Also, it still had a great texture the next day right out of the fridge - not so hard like a lot of them get overnight in the cold.

Well worth it is all I can say! If a chocolate cake is in your near future, this is your frosting recipe! Promise!

flowering cabbages

2010-11-05T16:27:00.005-06:00

I'm not really one to wax lyrical about my garden - it's been in pure survival mode the last couple of years, and I really haven't had anything that spectacular to talk about. But this year there was an exception. Meet Flowering Cabbages:

A few weeks later than we should have, Fritz and I got down to business and threw a bunch of seeds into our front flower bed. The flowering cabbages were by far the greatest success. My only regret was not thinning them, like the package suggested. My attitude at the time was the more the merrier! But as the summer went on it was pretty obvious they were really overcrowded.

Despite overcrowding, they were quite glorious, if I do say so myself. But what I really can't get over is that it is November 5th, and after to many hard frosts to count, this is what they still look like. A few weeks back, they sat under an inch of snow for a day or so. No problem. Everything else in the garden has turned into wilted heaps of green slime, but not these babies. Next year, I'm planting even more. Cabbage mania!

hallowe'en over = relief

2010-10-31T20:32:00.005-06:00

Yep, relief. Somehow, I'm not quite the kind of mum I'd envisioned I'd be. Given the fact that I have a long history of sewing projects, and am generally a fairly crafty gal, I figured that when I became a mother, I'd be that formidable woman that gets it together early, and creates amazing costumes for her children out of thin air.

Instead, I found myself madly trying to put together a last minute hap-hazard piggy costume for Liesl this afternoon. One sheet of pink felt later, a piggy costume was born.

LLB saved my bacon for Fritz' costume last week when we were there. She had a huge bag of costumes up for grabs, and Fritz just happened to connect with the leopard. Here's the results just before we went trick or treating this evening.

Pure cuteness!

And here's my other great Hallowe'en feat: baking cookies for Fritz' preschool party. Four dozen sugar cookies later, and this was all that remained:

The kids got to decorate theirs at school, and I took home the leftovers and did these up. Tooth-achingly sweet, I tell you. But all in all, it was fun, and the joy that Fritz had being a leopard was pretty incomparable.

i've got the fever!

2010-10-25T13:36:00.004-06:00

Quilting Fever, that is. I just got back from spending an awe-inspiring week with LLB and her quilting madness. We rifled through her entire studio, looked at blocks she was experimenting with, even nearly finished quilt tops! I'm envious of how much stuff she actually manages to crank out with two kids vying for her time.

Earlier this year, (January or February?) I ordered a bunch of 1/2 yard cuts from Cia's Palette, kind of on a whim really, because there was definitely no quilt being planned at that point. I ordered an absolute jumble of fabrics, and this is what I got:

There are some Alexander Henry prints in there, some Kaffe Fassett, some Denyse Schmidt and a few Jay McCarroll. I really heart Jay. He won the first project runway, and endeared himself to me way back then already.

So I definitely have enough for a quilt, but I could use another dark value or two. Most of what I have is mid range, or light, so I'm going to try to get to Fabricland this week to pick up a couple more darks. I've also realized I've got a pretty decent Amy Butler stash from making clothes and aprons, and it's all about to get converted to quilts. There will be no stopping me!

blankie done!

2010-10-12T14:17:00.003-06:00

This was actually a really quick and mindless knit. Finished a couple of weeks ago, and finally got around to blocking it last week. Still a bit pooky in the middle, despite the firm blocking it got. But that's not something to lose sleep over in this case... the gal I gave it to loved it, and the baby it's for won't care!

the haircut

2010-10-08T13:08:00.004-06:00

Ok...yesterday was the big day of the haircut. I tried someone new, and I think I'm going to stick with her, even though it got cut just a little shorter in the back than I expected. (Alarm bells were going off when she brought out the electric razor to clean up the back a bit). But all in all, it's a good cut, and I think it will be a REALLY good cut in about 3-4 weeks. And this was the first girl that I'd ever gone to that actually seemed interested in really working with my curly hair, instead of just cutting it, and then copping out with "do you mind if I just blow this out for you". In other words, sending me home with poker straight hair, leaving me to deal with my unruly mop on my own. Again.

Pardon the flash/bathroom late night photo, but I wanted to try and get a shot while it still looked somewhat fresh from the salon.

At first I felt a bit like a dog named Tippy that we used to live near. One hot summer, Tippy got his first haircut ever, and after that, the dog was never the same. It was like he was really embarrased of his new naked self. After a few weeks he started to show some signs of agression, and ultimately went nuts. Had to be taken out to the back 40 and ... you can imagine the rest.

The good news is that I don't feel as naked as Tippy, and I'm making the adjustment to much shorter hair more easily! The main thing is that my hair actually has a style now, vs. the mop on top of my head it had become. Plus it takes about 10 seconds to do, plus air dry time. Yay!

scarf + time for a haircut

2010-09-23T12:24:00.005-06:00

Well, way back here, I started working on a scarf. It's been done for a really long time, but for some reason, I let it hang out in my sewing room for a few weeks. But the cold weather is arriving, slowly but surely, so it's time to start wearing it.

It's knit with the Mirasol yarn that is 100% baby llama. (Thanks LBB!) Soft and lovely, and goes with virtually everything I have. Forgive the crazy hair. I keep deluding myself that it is a thick and lovely mane, and then my bubble totally gets burst every time I see photos of myself. Time for a chop!

blankie

2010-09-13T14:11:00.003-06:00

My super nanny that has been taking care of my kids a few mornings a week is having a baby! She's only about 4 1/2 months along, but I really wanted to make something nice for the new baby, and I thought I'd do some nice mindless knitting in the form of a blankie.

I know it's hard to see from the photo, because my knitting needle is way to short for this project, but it's basically concentric squares in whole bunch of colours. My nanny is not finding out if it's a boy or girl, so I opted for bright and cheerful, hopefully not leaning to far over to the girly or boy side. I think it's kind of masculine so far, but whatever. It's relaxing knitting, and that's what I'm all about right now!

painting, but the wrong kind

2010-09-10T13:28:00.005-06:00

You haven't heard much from me lately because it's been painting madness around here the last 2 weeks. After living with patched drywall for nearly 18 months, I decided to hire someone to paint this place. After a severe case of sticker shock from reviewing several painter's quotes, I had a sudden burst of energy, and got to it myself - a job I'd been dreading for a very long time.

Previously, the entire house had been painted a very dark shade of tan. A colour that most people who entered our home found very "soothing", but I always found way to dark. Light absorbing. Here's some before and afters.

So I doused most of the main floor in a liberal coating of Benjamin Moore's Cloud White. My favourite white ever. I also hit the kitchen with a shot of light lime green, and it feels much fresher now too. No photos of that yet, though.

The photos kind of make it look like I painted the place "Cloud Yellow", but really it is white. A lovely creamy white. I'm still painting trim...and probably will be for the rest of my life. I'm going to have to chip away at it for awhile, because compared to rolling walls, it seems kind of soul-destroying.

Anywho, I'm just so thrilled to have a bright house again. It is impossible to feel gloomy in this house now, even on rainy days. YAY!

best laid plans...

2010-08-16T11:52:00.003-06:00

We just got back from Vancouver a few days ago. We had a lovely holiday, spent lots of time on the beach, and even went sailing for an afternoon!

It's funny, the night before we left, I was scurrying around the house trying to assemble all the knitting projects I would need to get me through the week. I ended up grabbing three projects: my blankie squares, and two different scarf projects. Ha ha. This what I got done on holiday.

Yeah, I know. Not very impressive. But this is actually a good thing. It means that for once, the weather in Vancouver was really great, and we spent lots of time outside. The blackberries were just beginning to ripen, and they grow in giant brambles everywhere you walk. So that was a big favourite for both grown-ups and kids: walking while trying to snag a few sweet blackberries.

Nice to go away, and nice to come home.

a montana scarf

2010-07-30T11:09:00.005-06:00

My awesome speech coach has helped me sooooo much over the last couple of months, so I decided to knit him a scarf as an extra thank you. Plus, I had written the knitting story as an exercise for one of his classes, so I figured it was an appropriate gift.

I used the Montana scarf pattern by Craig Rosenfeld and it was really good knitting. The scarf only has 2 rows so it provided 3 or 4 hours of blissed out mindless knitting. And of course, it's always really satisfying knitting something with such big wool (I used Berrocco's Peruvia Quick), it grows off your needles really fast. I also really liked this pattern because I thought it was masculine. It's hard finding stuff that guys will wear. I guess it's actually more unisex though, because I'm already thinking I'd like to make myself one that's bit longer, maybe with a giant fringe.

I gave it to Jeff yesterday, and he was completely thrilled, and his wife confirmed for me on the spot that he is, in fact, a scarf wearing man, so good on all counts. Yay!

saskatoons!

2010-07-29T20:39:00.004-06:00

The other night I went near the river, to a spot my sister had told me about. Wild saskatoon bushes growing thick with berries. It was great. Peace and quiet, and purple stained hands by the time I was done.

I decided to make Julie Van Rosendaals Saskatoon Bars for dessert last night. My sister and dad were here, so I knew I'd have some takers. Unfortunately, just as my oven timer would have been ringing, I got 3 phone calls in quick succession, slammed my finger in the front door, and the City of Calgary arbourists showed up to scout out planting a new tree in our front yard. The cake stayed in the oven at least 20 minutes to long. I also didn't have the presence of mind to take a photo of it. Julie Van Rosendaal's looked much nicer anyway, so go see hers!

Everyone aggreed: They were very dry, but very good. The saskatoons had more in common with dehydrated fruit that their original incarnation. But the recipe is a keeper. No distractions next time!

bad hair day secret weapon

2010-07-20T13:49:00.006-06:00

My sister was over the other afternoon, so I modelled my hat for her. She wasted no time in telling me this sort of hat looks good on almost no one, and they are possibly one of the worst things to ever hit fashion. Sigh. She also thinks that they look like they are going to fall off the back of your head. This is true, they do kind of look that way, but I can attest to the fact that when I wear it, it is firmly anchored to my head!

Considering that my bad hair days vastly out number the good ones, I still have high hopes that this type of hat will be my new secret weapon against looking truly disheveled most days.

After my photo shoot to grab these two photos, I went out for an afternoon on the town wearing my hat. And I have to say: It made me feel great - really stylin' for a change. So the hat stays, and it may even grow a few more friends. This is the summer of accessories after all.

the summer of accessories

2010-07-18T09:52:00.006-06:00

I am really loving the mindless knitting right now. I know I've read in several of Elizabeth Zimmermann's books her love of mindless knitting. Like knitting all knit stitches in the round, hour after hour so that you can knit, and think your great thoughts.

That's where I'm at. Mindless knitting while I contemplate life. Perfect.

A couple of birthdays ago, LBB gave me this beautiful stuff: 3 skeins of Mirasol's Miski 100% baby llama. It is sooooo soft.

I tend to be a hoarder when it comes to yarn and fabric. Keeping things way to long, searching for the PERFECT project, and nothing less. So sometimes yarn that I really love will sit around for a long time. No more! I am really going to try and knit though my stash this summer - at least all the yarn that I have non-sweater quantities of. I declare this... The Summer of Accessories. A good idea too, because every fall, winter, and spring, I always wish I had an extra scarf or two, or a cowl, and suddenly it seems to late. Not this year. Yesterday, the Cheese Monsters (that's what my parents have been calling them lately) and I got busy and wound up the yarn.

And as of today, I've got a fair bit already done on Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's One Row Scarf:

It's turning out really great, I can tell I am going to wear this a lot this winter.

a knitting story

2010-07-16T11:17:00.001-06:00

My new part-time job requires some public speaking skills that I just don't have, so a couple of months ago, I hired a speech coach to help me get rid of my ummms and uhhhhs, and various other speech maladies I have. My speech coach Jeff got me to write a breif true story from my life and practice presenting it. I ended up writing a knitting story, and it occured to me a few days ago, this would also be a great place to share it. Here it is:

I really enjoy knitting. My grandma taught me how to knit when I was 5 or 6 years old. We lived on a farm and I had a long bus ride to and from school every day, so I sat on the school bus and knit. I knit throughout my life, mostly for making gifts, but when I became pregnant with my first child, I really started to get into it. I would spend hours exploring new stitches, looking through pattern books, and even designing my own sweaters. I loved the portability of knitting, and how easy it was to work on something for a few minutes, and then put it down if the need arose.

Several years ago, I was highly pregnant with my 2nd baby. I was a week past my due date, and my mum had come to Calgary to stay with us. We didn’t have a guest room at the time, so she was sleeping on a mattress in the living room. She was staying with us until the baby came so that she could take care of our first child while we were at the hospital.

One night, I was in a deep sleep when I sat bolt upright in bed, having been awakened by an extremely powerful contraction. I poked my husband in the ribs, hissing “Stewart, wake up, I just had a contraction”. Before the words were even out of my mouth, my water had broken, and I was running for the bathroom.

Things happened very fast from there. By the time I had gotten dressed, my contractions were coming so quick and hard that I was bent over in pain, leaning against the door frame. I was trying to breath my way through my contractions as I got my shoes on. My mother was awake by now, trying to help us out the door. We were almost ready to go when I remembered my knitting, and the long hours I’d be spending in the hospital with nothing to do after I was through labour. (You can’t hold your baby ALL the time!)

Through gritted teeth and another contraction, I hollered at my husband “Stewart, my knitting – get it!” After what seemed like forever, he managed to procure my knitting bag, and we were stumbling our way to the car. Liesl was born 45 minutes later at the Rockyview hospital, and I had my knitting to wile away the hours the next couple of days. My family still laughs at my insistence at that moment to get the knitting!

the blog is not dead, really

2010-07-11T16:36:00.005-06:00

I know, I know, after being postless for nearly 2 months, you are all probably thinking, well that's that, she's finally given up.

Not quite. I've been working part-time, plus working part-time for our business, plus taking care of our kids most of the time, which equals...a lot more than full time. So I've been busy. And that has meant that I haven't made a lot of stuff lately, which is really starting to get on my nerves.

Last night, I sat down with a knitting project I'd started about a month ago, and got busy. Here it is in all it's glory:

It's Natalie Larson's Spring Beret which I found on Ravelry. I like it so far, largely because it's done in a Marcia colour. The yarn is cotton from Mission Falls. More to come soon, I promise.

Now, about the blogging. I've been trying to figure out why I'm the postless wonder lately (besides being busy). I think it's because my standards have been to high. Crumbs on the table? Can't take a photo right now. Crappy night lighting? Oh well, photos will have to wait until tomorrow afternoon when the sun's out. Kid stuff everywhere trying to sneak its way into a shot? Photos will have to wait until I clean the house.

And then there's the actual text itself. Blogger drives me nuts with its stupid formatting issues. And so being the Type A that I am in this deptartment, I've thought nothing of cutting & pasting back and forth between entries to get spacing to look decent if Blogger has gone nuts and made it wonky. And sometimes I feel overwhelmed by having to constantly link to every source I name in a post.

So here's to turning over a new leaf with new, significantly lower standards! Future posts will be featuring extensively

photos with crumbs in them

photos with bad flash photography

photos with children's fingers in them

linkless patterns and designers - find it yourself!

bad Blogger formatting - who cares!

There you have it. Starting off with the crazy business that Blogger just did to my bullet points! Dang! I do still want to blog. I'm just going to totally throw away any notion I ever had that it was going to "look right". Off I go!

a sweater's worth of spinning

2010-05-06T11:49:00.007-06:00

The weather was nice last week, so I got busy, and did some dyeing. I thought I'd document the process from beginning to end.

First I got out all my supplies, weighed the wool, and tried to figure out how to get the colour I wanted.

Then I filled my dye pot with water, and carefully coiled the wool on top of the water.

I gently plunged the wool into the water until most of the air bubbles were gone. Fritz was only to happy to assist me. Liesl was napping, or she would have been in there too.

I chose 4 colours of dye to sprinkle onto the wool: chartreuse, olive, emerald green, and deep orange. I use Jacquard brand acid dyes.

Then it steamed away for 40 minutes on my barbeque. After a thorough soak and rinse, this is what I got:

Then I did it all over again with the same amount of wool, varying the colour slightly. The other batch turned out a bit greener and brighter than I intended, so after I spin up all of this wool into yarn, I might overdye it one more time in case it's a bit bright... after all, I want Stewart to wear the end result, and in its current state, it might be a bit wild.

I'm just happy to have a summer spinning project, so when it gets to hot to do anything outside, I'll be able to retreat to our cool basement for a few hours and make some yarn!

no more last minute stockings

2010-04-22T08:21:00.006-06:00

I had a brilliant idea last year. I'd been trying hard to knit my way through my yarn stash, and I was trying to figure out what to do with the first sizable yarn purchase I ever made, over 15 years ago. I had been attracted to a locally processed and spun, very rustic looking brand of yarn, which turned out to be incredibly scratchy. And I didn't have enough of any one colour to do anything. Not that you'd want to wear an accessory made out of this stuff in the first place.

I had a eureka moment. I would knit up Christmas stockings for the four of us, including embroidering names and decorations. I knew I would need to supplement what I had with a few extra balls, so I went out and bought a nicely complementing scratchy yarn: Lite-Lopi.

I had this great idea the last week in November. And of course, Christmas came and went without new stockings. There was no way I could make the deadline. This is how far I got before I threw the entire project back in its plastic shopping bag:

April doesn't seem to be an ideal month for working on heavy woolen stockings, but it seems a lot better than November. I'm going to try and resurrect this project for the summer months so that next Christmas I can whip these out as if it were no big thing at all, instead of a last minute stress-fest like last year!

freshly dyed yarn

2010-04-16T20:05:00.007-06:00

As promised, I got out my dye pot today! It was really fun to do this again, and made me realize how much I'd missed it. I still had some premixed dye in the fridge from last summer, so I got out the bottles and went to town. This is my elaborate dye kitchen:

Well, not a kitchen. But it's my prefered spot for steaming the yarn. It works ok, but one of these days, I'd like to get a hot plate so that I have a little more control. I dyed 4 skeins, and I'm really happy with the way they turned out.

I'm forever pushing myself not to dye everything "Marcia" colours. So I did up a nice burnt orange and a green to compliment the blue and violet that tend to be my favourites. I'll knit through this in no time, and I'm already plotting what to dye next.

blanket squares

2010-04-14T09:20:00.003-06:00

I got going on this project a couple of weeks ago and I'm making pretty good progress on it. It's the Barn Raising Quilt from the book Knitalong. It's a great way to use up all those ball ends of sock yarn. The downer is that it's...sock yarn. So this one is going to take awhile. But it's the best kind of knitting there is: mindless.

This is what I have so far. I've been wanting to get these squares blocked, but no time lately, so I present them to you in their raw, curled and unblocked state. I also found a great deal on some blah sock yarn a few weeks back, so I've re-wound it into skeins, and am planning to over dye it with some wild colour on the weekend.

I haven't dyed anything since last fall, mainly because I do it outside on the side burner of the barbecue, and it hasn't been barbecuing weather for quite some time. But spring is almost here, so there will be dying very shortly!

chevron scarf

2010-03-30T09:27:00.004-06:00

This project has been my go-to mindless knitting project for a couple of months. I finished it a few weeks ago, but didn't get around to sewing in the ends and blocking it until just a few days ago. It's the chevron scarf from Joelle Hoverson's Last-Minute Knitted Gifts.

I think it's a bit deceiving to call this a last-minute knitted gift, because it was a lot of knitting. Hundreds of yards of sock yarn at looser gauge than normal. The only thing really last-minute thing about it is that you probably already have the yarn you need in your stash. But it was really enjoyable to knit. Perfect movie knitting.

Sorry about the un-modeled shot, but it seems easier than trying to be photogenic this morning! Anyway, this one's off to LLB as soon as I can get it packaged. My timing is impeccable - it will arrive in time for the warm summer weather. Maybe for next fall?

painting experiment

2010-03-23T12:07:00.004-06:00

I've got some ideas that I'd like to paint, but lately I've realized I'm not sure how to lay down what's going on in my head into a 2D form. So a couple of weeks ago, I decided to just take some time out to play, no pressure.

It was a great time to experiment, and of course, I did it on rag paper - my favourite cheap support. I divided the paper into squares so that I could concentrate on just a couple techniques in each area. Sadly, my camera combined with flat light makes it difficult to see all the texture in the photo.

The one investment I did make was for some new gel mediums I hadn't tried before. I tried crackle paste, but I'm not sure if I like it. You really need a much firmer substrate than paper. I keep wondering if I'm going to come downstairs one morning to find a bunch of crackle paste corn flakes on the floor.

My two big favourites were light molding paste and clear tar gel. They both seem to have the most versatility. It's hard to see but the clear tar gel has extreme shine. It's the kind of thing that can be really cool, used sparingly. I'm not sure if I'd want to see an entire painting covered it it.

I still have a few more things I want to try out, but I'm hoping this is going to help give me some ideas as how to tackle my next big project.

delicious malabrigo

2010-03-19T10:27:00.006-06:00

If you'd asked me a couple of years ago what my least favourite colour was, I'd have probably said purple. But that's been slowly changing since I've had kids (perhaps due to a hormonal imbalance?!)

More and more, I find purple creeping into my wardrobe. And if it's a muted purple, all the better. A knitting project that I've been chipping away at for the last couple of weeks is:

It's Mary-Heather Cogar's Simple Things scarf, and so far, it's true love. Not only do I love the colour, but I'm knitting it in Malabrigo sock yarn. For those of you who don't knit, that's equivalent to a knitter's crack cocaine. The more I knit with this yarn, the more I want to buy. More, more, more! Lucky for my wallet, it's not always easy to find.

freezer paper, you're my new bff

2010-03-17T08:14:00.006-06:00

Little Brown Badger was here this weekend, without kids, without husband. Extreme shoe shopping and fun ensued. And then just before she left, she taught me how to do one of the easiest, funnest wardrobe mods I've ever seen! Viva la freezer paper stencils!

I'd seen the finished results on lots of LBB's stuff over the years, and I was always impressed with the results, but for some reason, I'd never tried it.

On Monday afternoon, we got down to business with our freezer paper and made stencils. I wish I'd photographed the process because I think it's shockingly cool what you end up with from a humble piece of freezer paper. I made two t-shirts:

The lamp shirt was a my tester. I accidentally chopped into the t-shirt's hem when I was trimming something else. Then later, when I was tapping my paint-loaded brush over the stencil, I was a little to enthusiastic, and accidentally drove some of the fabric paint under the stencil. But the scissors shirt turned out really great.

LBB says the biggest disadvantage of freezer paper stencils is that eventually everything in your closet gets a liberal dose of stencilling, until you no longer have two garments that you can wear together for fear of looking a wee bit over stencilled. Is that even possible??!!!

must. keep. knitting.

2010-02-28T13:33:00.004-07:00

Poor Stewart. I started this sweater a couple of days before Christmas, happily chirping that he'd have himself a new sweater by the middle of January. Well...it's long past the middle of January, and the beginnings of his sweater have been sitting balled up in a basket for most of that time.

What I really need is about 3 solid, uninterrupted hours to figure out what's going on with it, and get going again. Unfortunately, Fritz & Liesl have no intention of giving me a block of time like that, so here it sits. I'm giving myself a deadline: by next weekend, I'd better have a plan, and have picked this up and started another sleeve. Otherwise, I'm just going to continue passing it over for other easy (mindless) projects, as I have been doing for nearly 2 months. Even if I do get going, it's going to be warm spring weather before this sweater is completed and sees the light of day!

this is my colour palette

2010-02-18T18:29:00.006-07:00

I've been doing some painting again lately. I thought I'd get my feet wet with something not to representational and decided to use some images I'd taken this past summer when we were visiting Bowen Island, just off the Vancouver coast. There was a computer shop on the island that had nailed up a few hundred old circuit boards on the outside wall. The humidity/rain had oxidized all the copper bits so that the boards had a beautiful patina.This is a study I finished yesterday:

And this is one of the circuite board wall photos:

I was chatting with a friend today about the above study, and she remarked that I'd used my palette, as in, my personal palette of colours that I never seem to deviate from. I am constantly fighting to add darker value to my drawing & paintings, but this is almost always what I end up with. Then she added, well yeah, look at what you're wearing! I was wearing red boots, multi-striped tights, a blue jean skirt, mauve sweater and a deep blue scarf wrapped around my neck. The moral of this story is that I dress like an Easter parade, and my work looks like it too.

And it's been this way for awhile. I think back to my last year of art school, and this is the palette I was using anytime my work had colour. So it's a little ingrained it seems. Ah well, there are probably worse fates than looking like a carnival.

where has the month gone?

2010-02-15T17:21:00.004-07:00

Already, it's the middle of the month, and I have pretty much nothing to show for myself. There hasn't been much making of anything lately, save for a few nondescript meals. Mostly I've been getting the basement ready for the return of furniture. Exciting, but probably only to me.

Along those lines, I've been thinking about what to put in the spare bedroom downstairs so that guests (mostly my mum & dad who refer to the basement as their personal suite) have a spot to put their suitcase. I was at my favorite thrift shop last week, just two block from my house, when I found this gem:

I picked it up, and 5 different women immediately swarmed me, querying if I was sure I wanted it, and if I didn't, they'd take it. It's pretty nice. Very old. And cheerfully green. I love it. So it's getting repurposed as a slim table, mostly for suitcase holding. It folds flat if I want to put it away, but the truth is, it's so lovely, I'll likely keep it out all the time.

hello, brother!

2010-01-31T19:25:00.004-07:00

Look what showed up here last week!

It's a Brother K-840 circa the late 1970's, I think. Someone on Stewart's side was downsizing, and her son knew I might be interested. Months later, it finally made it's journey to Calgary. It's in pretty good shape, I think it may have been used a couple of times in its life. The only obvious thing it's missing is a manual, but I've found a few on the internet for similar models.

The only other thing I'm missing is a place to put it. But our basement is almost put back together, so hopefully in the next couple of months, I'll get it going. Fritz & Liesl were riveted, and had to touch every single little piece in the box. Setting if up will definitely have to be a project for after bedtime.

r.i.p. nereid gloves

2010-01-17T20:21:00.006-07:00

These had so much potential. I started them in October. I finished the first one. It seemed a bit small, and wasn't fun to knit. Then, determined to make a mate in the mirror image of the first one, I grimly soldiered on. If every person on Ravelry could do it, so could I.

I got about halfway done the second one, all the while cursing the fit of the first. The project then got thrown into the basket of no return. I was to annoyed to even entertain ripping it out at that point. Well, that all changed a couple of days ago. I ripped out the half finished glove to begin a different project, and its remaining mate is not far behind. But for the sake of documentation, here's a photo of my disembodied arm:

The pattern has potential, and I could be convinced to give it another go. Someday. But in the meantime, see you later stupid Nereid gloves. You are so dead to me.

t-shirt yarn extravaganza

2010-01-13T14:03:00.006-07:00

I'd been wanting to do this for awhile - make yarn out of old t-shirts, but we'd recently done a big clothing cull around here, and didn't have anything to donate to my scrap heap. Finally I noticed this jersey on sale last weekend, so I bought a small piece to test drive.

Stefanie Japel has a really great tutorial on how to do it here. To make it go faster, I grabbed my rotary cutter and sliced through the fabric, leaving just the ends in tact so that I could use my scissors to "make a turn" at each end. This is what I ended up with:

Once I'd cut all the fabric into ribbons, all it took was a little pull to make it into a tube, and ta ta!

It would have worked brilliantly except for those annoying ends, which ended up looking like little flags sticking out of my yarn. Next time I will follow instructions a bit better and cut the entire thing by hand with scissors in a spiral to ensure tubular perfection. Still, I'm curious to see what this will look like knitted up. Maybe a scarf?

a yeller skirt

2010-01-07T08:23:00.005-07:00

I love this skirt so much.

It has been worn and washed so many times than it is starting to feel a bit thin. I bought it at a craft fair a couple of years ago from Sabrina Butterfly. As far as I know, she no longer comes to Calgary and now has set up her own little shop in Edmonton, which I never get to. Something had to be done! So I made a pattern from my skirt, and whipped this up just before Christmas for dear LBB.

It turned out really great, and I already have fabric for the main colour for a skirt of my own. Now to find some time.

giant pockets

2009-12-27T14:44:00.003-07:00

More sewing! I made this a few weeks ago, but finally wore it for the first time to our family thing on Christmas Day. I used Vogue 8552, and love it. This is a pattern I will make again and again, just changing a few details here and there. Here is me amidst the toy chaos of Christmas morning:

The pockets are massive. They are sewn so that they stand away from the dress by a couple of inches. And I love them, although no one else seems to. The jury is in, and Andi, Christine, my mother, and my sister all agree... something must be done to help the pockets. I, on the other hand, love their giantness even more every time I wear the dress, so I think they are going to stay. The only thing I'd do a little differently next time is make the arm hole a 1/4 inch deeper. They are on the verge of bugging me, but now that I think of it, it didn't occur to me once on Christmas Day to yank my dress out of my armpits, so maybe it's not such a big deal.

shorty pants

2009-12-21T12:40:00.005-07:00

I've been really sick of wearing jeans lately. The same old pair of ill-fitting jeans. I'd had a pattern kicking around for ages, and happened to see some (polyester!) corduroy that I really liked at the fabric store a few weeks ago.

I used Simplicity 2860, but it didn't quite live up to the hype. The pattern makes great claim of acheiving a perfect fit for your body type. After a rather lengthy program of numerous measurements, I determined that I was a "curvy". This sounded about right.

But once I got going, it became clear I was more "average" because of all the extra fabric I had to trim off the hip/thigh area. The pattern states the waistband will sit 1/2" below your natural waist, which actually means about 1 inch over your navel. Hmmm.

They do fit well enough, and I made them short on purpose. I added patch pockets on the back, and buttons on the sides. I'll make them again, but next time, I'll lower the waist by a couple of inches. And I'll scrap the zip fly, and put in buttons at the hip on one side. Much easier.

box bags

2009-12-14T14:05:00.004-07:00

I've wanted to try this forever, and finally got around to it a couple of weeks ago:

You see these on blogs all over the internet, and there are dozens of tutorials on how to do it. I used this one and it turned out great. The bag is lined with a light weight cotton fabric and the exterior is a light weight canvas from Ikea. The only thing I did differently was add bias tape to cover the seams on the bags interior for a neater look. This one was for a gift, but I've got plans of cranking a few more out.

bread

2009-12-11T13:54:00.007-07:00

I took this book out of the library:

It is so good. I spent the last day or two assembling the ingredients I would need, mainly fresh yeast, and bread flour. This morning I had my first foray into bread making. Well, not first ever, but first in at least 10 years, if you don't count making pizza dough. It was a raging success! Here's what I made:

fougasse

an epi on the left, and bread sticks on the right

The bread sticks got devoured at lunch time. The had kalamata olives, parmesan, and dried herbes de provence in the them. Ridiculously good, and I'm not even a big fan of olives!

The epi turned out ok, although I think I let it rise a bit to much on the pan, so the "grains of wheat" are bit more attached that they should be.

Bertinet has a method of making dough much different that what I was taught. The dough as it is initially mixed is a sticky mass. Like sticking to everything, bowl, fingers, counter. But after working it in the manner he prescribes, which is much more like folding than kneading, you do indeed get a lovely mass of dough after about 5 minutes.

Then you pop it in your bowl (which you don't have to clean, love that) and wait an hour. When you scrape the dough out of your bowl a little later, you're greeted with the softest, giant air bubbliest dough you can imagine. It's really unusual to work with, but not difficult.

After shaping my dough, and letting things rise a bit, I used my water spritzer bottle to give my oven the requisite steam blast. And then lovely bread.

I'm going to slowly work my way through all five doughs in this book: white, brown, olive, sweet, and rye. Well, maybe not rye.

a dress for liesl

2009-11-24T15:32:00.004-07:00

I finished this quite some time ago. Long ago enough that it has been well worn, and lately, outright rejected.

It desperately needs a wash, but I desperately need a blog post, and have been unable to convince Liesl that she should pose for a photo, so here it is hanging on our deck. I knit it from a pattern in Debbie Bliss' Design It, Knit It book. Of course it was designed to be knit flat, so my only real design contribution was to change it into the round. For about 20 hours of knitting, I wish it was still in regular rotation, but Liesl is onto bigger and better things. Girly things. Covered in Pink Flowers. I'm definitely going to have to step up my knitting game if I want her to wear anything I make!

a not-so-triumphant return

2009-11-15T16:45:00.007-07:00

I didn't think I was going to come back. But the last week or two, I've found myself thinking in posts. I'd finish a project and let thoughts float around that I'd want to talk about on my blog, if I was still blogging.

But mostly I'm feeling disconnected from my loyal readership. Girls, I love looking at your stuff, and I feel like if you can't see mine, how can you know this huge part of me? So here I am. I'm going to stop worrying about presenting all my projects with numerous progress posts. This here blog will probably just be about what I'm starting and finishing. I'll save the nitty gritty how I did it details for another day.

And to that end, here are two really big deals, both in the following photo:

a) I got bangs!

b) I finished a giant sweater!

First about the bangs. I've wanted bangs for years and years (probably since meeting Christine!) Every person who has ever cut my hair has told me that it's a big NO because of my hair type (unreliably curly, but only in a few spots) and cowlick madness! But last week I found a gal who was willing to do it. So here I am. I vacillate between an all out self esteem crisis, and true love. Time will tell.

The sweater: I wanted something over sized (I got it) and cozy. It's getting a fair bit chilly around these parts, and I wanted something warm to wear over everything. It's great! It's already getting the "furry sweater" look from constant wear. It's better for relaxing in than actually working in though, because the sleeves are so long and big, working in the kitchen is impossible.

So that's it. Over the next few weeks I'll fill in some of the gaps from past months that never made it to my bloggity blog.

adios blog

2009-08-15T18:59:00.000-06:00

Yes, it's come to this.

I can't really explain it, but I just feel like living in a vacuum for a little while. Maybe it's because I've come to the realization that I love making stuff a lot more than I like writing about making stuff. There are also some other non-creative things I'm working on right now, and I'd like to give them a little more time.

So I might be back in a few weeks, or a few months, or never. I'll keep the option open. Until then...

ta daaa!

2009-08-07T20:37:00.004-06:00

What a fast knit this was! Even faster than toddler knits, are baby knits!

It turned out well. The only thing I'd change is checking my gauge before I started knitting. The sweater feels a little firmer than it should. I wanted to get going right away, so I got started by using the recommended needle size off of the ball, and should have probably gone up at least one needle size. That's the great thing about baby sweaters: size doesn't really matter as long as you can get it to the baby early enough. It will eventually fit at some stage, even if it's only for about 6 weeks, as it always seems to happen.

legwarmers progress report

2009-08-06T13:28:00.004-06:00

The legwarmers are coming along swimmingly! I took them along on holidays a couple of weeks ago, and because they were one of the only things I had along to knit, I was forced into making progress.

Lace knitting is definitely not something I could do full time. But it's kind of nice to have a project like this that I can pick away at, and when I get tired of it, put it on the back burner for awhile. Like now. Virtually no progress has been made since we got home, but I know it's there waiting for me when I get stumped on something else.

sweaters for eden & arlo

2009-08-05T13:26:00.003-06:00

The girls got their sweaters yesterday, on possibly the warmest day in the Okanagan. They insisted on wearing them for a bit before their wise mama put them away until it gets cooler. LBB informed me that the Eden and Arlo were completely bananas about their sweaters, which was very thrilling for me. Making anything for kids can be so hit or miss.

Before I packaged them for mailing, I thought I'd quickly give them a try-on with my kids, who happen to be almost the same size.

Once the sweaters were on, I realized that I've actually been knitting sweaters for monkeys. The girls will rolling up the sleeves on their sweaters for quite awhile!

rehabiliated sweaters

2009-08-04T13:55:00.004-06:00

Yesterday I took Fritz and Liesl over to see my good friend Tara and her little boy. Happy chaos ensued, and all children (and adults I suspect) were thoroughly exhausted after a couple of hours.

One of the great things about our visit is that I was finally able to give away some sweaters that have been lurking in the back of my closet, and that I've been feeling kind of guilty about.

Sweater #1:

I finished this sweater about a year before I even started blogging (so nearly 2 years ago). It's Jared Flood's Cobblestone. I knit the sweater from Elann's Peruvian Highland Donegal, then decided after the fact that it really wanted to be a cardigan. So I steeked it, despite the garter stitch yoke. It still didn't look that great on me. So it's been sitting around for quite awhile.

Sweater #2:

The last time you saw this one, it was getting blocked. Then I suddenly shut up about it. That's because it looked so appalling on me that I couldn't bare to take a photo and post it on this here blog.

But Tara looks great in both! We are pretty close to the same size, but she's more petite, as you can see by how long the blue sweater's sleeves are on her! I'm just thrilled they've finally found a good home, I have some room in my closet, and I can stop feeling so guilty about hand-knit unworn sweaters!

my spinning wheel was calling to me

2009-07-29T19:39:00.003-06:00

Today I suddenly felt compelled to vacuum up the dust bunnies from every corner of the living room. In doing so, I moved my spinning wheel to clean up behind an armchair, and was suddenly overtaken with the need to madly spin!

Just before our holiday, I had split a piece of roving into 10 gram chunks and dyed them up into random colours. I'd originally thought I was going to be very scientific and dye them using my new found knowledge from the dye class I'd taken a few weeks back, but ultimately, I started this project way to late in the evening. Before I knew it, I was splashing dye around every which way, not keeping any records of what I was doing of course. The end result was this hodge podge:

I drafted some of it out this afternoon and got going. My goal is to start spinning some thicker yarns, at least heavy worsted weight. It seems so easy to spin thin, and impossible to make an even thick yarn, but I'm going to try and spin a little bit every day for the next couple of weeks. Hopefully after some serious practice, I'll have something worthy to knit with.

another raglan (baby) sweater

2009-07-28T21:19:00.005-06:00

The great thing about baby knitting is the compactedness of it all. It's like sock knitting - the go everywhere project.

I started this while on holidays, and it's almost done. It's knit in Lion Brand's Cotton-Ease which is a 50/50 blend of cotton and acrylic. For quite some time I've been a yarn snob, never ever considering using a yarn with any acrylic/man-made fibre (sock yarn withstanding). But the grim reality of it is this: when you are a new mum, even an experienced mum that is a couple babies in, hand washing anything is simply not an option. Full-body-mind-numbing-exhaustion does not make for well cared for baby knits. Enter Cotton-Ease. Machine wash, machine dry, music to an mother's ears.

And to Lion Brand's credit, I have absolutely loved knitting with it. It really has a nice feel in your hands. I hope it lives up to its promise of being easily laundered. After I'm done the sweater, I'm going to knit up a swatch and wash and dry it with every load of kids' laundry and see what it looks like. Hopefully not a pilled mess.

The inspiration for this sweater came from Debbie Bliss' Baby and Toddler Knits.

I loved this sweater, but Cotton-Ease was the wrong gauge to knit it, so in the end, I just cast on and used the stripes as inspiration. I'd also been looking for an excuse to learn the jogless join when knitting stripes on circular needles, and knitting jogless stripes is what has been so fun about this sweater. Serious exhilaration every time I end/beginning a new round. I learned all about it here.

The other thing I wanted to change about the DB sweater was all the seaming. I feel like babies have enough to contend with, without dealing with extra bulk from seams in their garments. Really! So I'm knitting it in the round (hence the jogless join) and putting in raglan lines for decreasing the yoke. To solve the problem of getting a giant baby bobble head through the neck hole, I'm going to pick up button bands along one of the front raglan lines. I'm almost done - more photos coming soon!

holiday induced sewing

2009-07-24T16:43:00.005-06:00

We just got back from a lovely holiday in Vancouver, which we spent visiting Stewart's family. It was relaxing, we had great weather, and I got to go off on my own a fair bit, which for me, is what makes a holiday a holiday. We stayed with Stewart's parents who have the greatest place ever - like going to the spa! The view from the patio:

And the back yard:

Seriously. This is where Stewart grew up.

We spent most of our time outside because the weather was so great. And in true holiday fashion, I was determined to whip up something the day before we left. Enter Vogue 8495.

I'd had some swiss dot print floating around for quite awhile. Another classic example of buying fabric, and then immediately falling out of love with it. So it became a nightgown, perfect for warm nights because the is so gauzy.

I made this pattern all wrong because I wasn't paying close attention when cutting it out. The top bodice part is supposed to be faced, but I didn't notice that I was supposed to cut 2 fronts and backs, and in the end I was glad of this. I finished the edges with bias tape made from the same fabric. The self-facing would have been a much quicker solution for arm and neck holes, but in the end, I was please not to have a suffocating double layer of fabric around my neck.

Since the pattern was written for a shirt, I extended it to appropriate nightgown length by piecing together some leftovers for a bottom band.

And that's it! I really like it, and it was nice to wear. The only thing I'd do differently is make the armholes a little deeper if I was making it as a nightgown, although it would be perfect as a shirt. The thing I love the most about it is that I bothered to make my own bias tape, and I'm so glad I did. The stuff you buy in packages would have been way to stiff for such light fabric. Yay me!

i miss my knitting

2009-07-13T13:23:00.004-06:00

I thought I was just going to concentrate on baby sweaters for awhile, but as it turns out, I'm trying to get a few other projects going as well. I feel like I haven't done any knitting for ages, although that's not exactly true. There just haven't been any monster projects to really hold my attention.

Also, knitting in summer is hard sometimes. I love to knit with wool. It is my fibre of choice. But it tends to be kind of sweaty to knit with in summer, so I only end up knitting on cooler, cloudy days. That ends up being not a lot of knitting. There is a really lovely cotton cardigan I am toying with making, but mostly I just think to myself how awesome it would be in wool instead of cotton.

I'm also trying to get some vacation knitting going. Mindless projects that can be worked on in the presence of relatives while chatting away. I guess that might be where the baby sweaters come in, because I just started these last week, and clearly I must have temporarily lost my mind:

Yep, that's right, legwarmers. Not only am I about to spend the equivalent time of knitting a sweater on an accessory, it's an accessory from a decade I generally abhor. Hilarious.

These are from Lace Style by Pam Allen & Ann Budd, a book that I would normally not touch with a 10 foot pole. Seriously aggravating knitting contained within. Endless counting, and forget about throwing yourself in front of a movie with any project from this book. Of course, this is just a hardcore non-lace knitter's opinion. (All orange legwarmer photographs from aformentioned book.)

So here we have it, me working on a lacy throwback from the eighties. I like wearing skirts and dresses a lot, but get chilly legs on cool days, not to mention winter looms only a few months away. This is what I have so far:

And let me tell you, it has been blood, sweat, and tears so far. I won't even go into ripping detail. Let's just say that it will be a downright miracle if I am wearing these by January.

baby sweater production

2009-07-08T14:15:00.004-06:00

I finished Eden's wee purple sweater last week, and have now knit a fair ways on Arlo's blue sweater. The girls are going to have matching sweaters, just in different colours.

I am really loving knitting for toddlers right now. It is so nice to cast on for a project, and then a couple of hours later, the sweater body is done up to the underarms. Instant gratification really. I'm going to continue on in this theme for a few more weeks. Two gals I know are both due in August, and I suspect I am the only knitter they know. Baby sweaters must be presented!

is it a dress...or a curtain panel?

2009-07-06T20:15:00.007-06:00

That is the question. I was working on this dress a couple of weeks ago and it was draped across my ironing board when my babysitter showed up. Check out what I'm sewing! I said. Oooooh, new curtains!? An honest mistake, but no. I was making this:

Not exactly the height of fashion, but serviceable at the very least. Really I should have known better, but my desire what great to use up fabric already existing in my stash, so I soldiered on. I finished, but for some reason didn't wear it. I dragged it along to see Little Brown Badger, and modeled it for her. She gave it a good critiquing. Nice shaping in the back (there are darts that help it skim), but kind of billowing in the front. She also mentioned that she thought the arm holes were to wide and should come in a bit. I hadn't noticed that as being one of the major problems, but after wearing this dress now for three days straight, is really is the biggest problem. Pain, people. We are talking chaffed, raw upper arms.

I wore it for the first time a couple of days ago. Then I wore it again yesterday. And today. The last couple of days I've done a lot of tidying, cleaning etc. Movements that involve me reaching forward with my arms, and after doing that several hundred times, the arm holes now feel as though they are made of cheese graters. I'll still wear it, just not a couple of days in a row.

The patter is McCalls 2796, and is really old, probably no longer available. (Not that you'd want it after reading this painful review). I made a short sleeved version over 10 years ago. The pattern calls for a zipper, which I put in last time, and then immediately regretted because the dress was so easily tossed over my head. So this time I scrapped the zipper entirely, and just cut out the back as one piece. That is probably the greatest thing this dress has going for it. I love that I can crawl out of bed, throw my dress in the air, and be dressed in something that is not jeans. I also like the side slits which go pretty high, and make a weak attempt to spring this dress out of frumpiness. But the next version is going to need some work on the armholes or I'll be climbing out of my skin.

bluebarb jam

2009-07-04T14:24:00.004-06:00

I know, I wasn't sold on the name either at first. I also wasn't entirely sold on my jam making abilities. My last attempt was about 12 years ago. Being young and idealistic, I tried to make sugar-free natural pectin jam on my first go. Ultimately, I ended up with a pantry full of jam that turned an alarming colour of grey after a couple of months, and of course, did not eat any of it, let alone give it away as gifts. Super gross.

But recently while reading my favorite food blog Dinner with Julie, I could not help but get enthused about trying again. Here's my lame attempt at styling toast. LAME.

But the jam, sooooo good! I got the recipe off of Julie's blog here. It has pectin, and lots of sugar. Nice and safe for a first batch of jam.

I'm planning to make a few more batches this summer. I found a recipe for peach jam that involves only peaches and sugar, and cooking it for a really long time. In the meantime, I'm feeling very luxurious in the mornings, eating my very own, very successful jam. Hooray!

a felting frenzy!

2009-07-02T14:29:00.007-06:00

So to top off the most awesome week ever with Little Brown Badger, we got to spend a weekend learning all things felting with Jessica de Haas. I must give credit where credit is due, the entire thing was organized by Badger's husband (aka Boss Hog on LBB's blog). It was wonderful because we got to be in an art workshop for a weekend, plus have a holiday from our kids for about 7 hours each day!

We made samples. Lots of samples. Which is what I love to do most in workshops. Making completed works is something I can do on my own time, but we just wanted to learn as much as we could over the course of two days.

The first thing we did was use multi layered pre-felt to make small designs. I loved this process, it was so immediate.

Here's a closeup where you can see the halo of the bottom colour sneaking out from underneath:

Then there was this using a technique to create paper out of wool and silk so that they could be drawn upon, the cut out and applied to a felt backing. Hideous, I know. But it's a sample! I was in hurry to just lay something, anything down!

We did a bunch of samples, felting onto every kind of fabric under the sun:

And I love this. A real mish-mash of of bunch of different techniques.

This spot is my favorite. I pulled some threads out of a piece of cheese cloth and felted them onto the surface.

It was great! Jessica was super cool, and was very generous with her information. Now I'm going to try and spend some time thinking of how and where I'm going to take this all. I'm kind of thinking of garment construction of some sort. Jessica told us about a pair of house boots she made, and after I do a ton more samples, that might be the first big project I tackle. Now to find some soles...

a giant flop

2009-06-30T21:29:00.005-06:00

About 9 days ago, I was madly sewing, desperate to make something lovely for Little Brown Badger's birthday. Making anything last minute is usually a bust for me, and this was no different.

I'd seen a few tutorials on blogs for fabric baskets, so I figured I knew what I was doing and got going. This is the basket looking all perky:

I'm pretty sure that if I'd taken time to carefully read some of those tutorials, they would have said something about this really only working well on small baskets. The dimensions of my basket were close to 10 inches square, much larger than I should have made it. This is its natural state, which it reverts to the minute you turn away:

Very floppy, and completely useless for holding anything. So this was a very un-handmade birthday for Little Brown Badger.

I'm not sure if I'll bother trying this project again. It seems kind of pointless to make little wee fabric baskets. I wanted something that was worthy of really holding a pile of junk!

In other news... the kids and I just returned from visiting Badger, had an amazing time, plus got to felt our hearts out for one wonderful weekend with Jessica de Haas. I'll hopefully post about all the great samples we made next time!

she stomped her feet...

2009-06-18T20:12:00.006-06:00

Yep, that's how thrilled Liesl was about getting her new skirt. She's been getting girly lately - wanting to pick her clothes in the morning, and often insisting on wearing a dress. The weather has been starting to warm up around here, and all her shorts are in a box somewhere in the depths of the garage (that would be all of Fritz's old hand-me-downs). So I had been thinking about making her some skirts using Little Brown Badgers' basic recipe: 1 strip for the yoke, 1 (frothily gathered) strip for the skirt. If you feel like getting fancy, you can make the waist band separately. Although, if you are trying to keep it quick and dirty, I don't know why you'd bother.

I had a cotton button down shirt in my closet that I hadn't worn for quite some time that decided it would much rather be a skirt for a 1 year old than be a shirt for me. Wish I'd taken a before photo, but I wasn't feeling that organized when the urge to make a skirt finally overcame me.

I was able to incorporate the cute heart buttons on the button band into the bottom part. It turned out really great, and Liesl was so thrilled that she immediately began stomping and hooting as she got into it. It turned out a bit long, and the waistband is fairly loose, so it will fit her for a couple of summers before it looks like a mini. It made me want to make one for myself immediately, although probably not out of a shirt. May all future sewing/knitting projects made for children be this successful!

a dyeing odyssey!

2009-06-15T14:14:00.007-06:00

On Saturday, I took part in one of best classes I've ever taken. It was a class on dyeing techniques taught by Lynn Pflueger at ACAD. Lynn is the real deal - she actually raises sheep. We mostly learned colour accuracy and reproducibility. The reproducibility is particularly thrilling for me, because whenever I dye something really great, I usually can't fathom how to do it a second time. At best, it's a happy accident.

We worked in three groups of three, each dyeing a colour wheel using different primary colours. I thought this would take ages, but it went surprisingly fast, and we learned so much from actually doing it ourselves instead of just reading about it. We were all using slightly different primary colours, so our work all turned out different. In the photo below, I tried to orient the three different wheels in the same direction so you can see the subtle differences a bit easier. All three groups used the same yellow, so that was the one constant amongst the colour wheels.

Then we used all of the leftover dye from making secondary colours to make more muted colours. They turned out to be my favorite. All colours with a lot of depth, and it seems with these, the dye often separated and struck the yarn a little differently. I wish I could take a better shot with my camera, but this is the best my point + shoot will do.

We also painted on wool fabric using thickened dyes, but the real stunner of the day was this: Lynn threw a shorn fleece (complete with straw and who knows what else clinging to it) into a pot of boiling water, sprinkled on three different colours of dye powder, covered the pot, and left it to simmer for 45 minutes. Soon the studio smelled like a barnyard, and when we uncovered the pot, the dye had been exhausted, and the fleece had been scoured. Once the fleece was removed, all that was left was some really dirty water containing the lanolin from the fleece, and all the barnyard stinky stuff. Here's a sample of what came out of the pot:

It was really astounding. The colour had gone right to the bottom of the pot, and had mixed itself and made every colour between the colours that had been thrown in. I'm going to attempt to spin up the sample Lynn gave me, spinning directly from these unprocessed locks.

Next Saturday is part 2. We are going to do discharge dyeing, shibori, plus use fibre reactive dyes. And vat dyeing. We are going to get to fool around with indigo. It's fibre overload this month!

a lovely roving

2009-06-11T14:29:00.006-06:00

I felt like doing some retail therapy a few weeks ago, and ended up at Make 1 Yarn Studio. Annie had just dropped off wool she'd dyed, and I nabbed this one:

I loved the colours, but the name also got me. Way back when I defined myself as a Curehead, a song called This Twilight Garden was one of my favorites.

I split the roving in half to make a 2-ply yarn, and I've got a bobbin of singles spun so far. I think the final yarn might end up being somewhere between sport and worsted weight. I say might be, because spinning for me at this point is still a big surprise. I'm getting better, but I'm still frequently shocked at how off I am in judging what a yarn is going to turn out like.

I'm also easily entertained, and when plying together two singles with a lot of different colour, I can't help but inwardly squeal to myself Look! Now there's green and teal together, and now teal and pink! And wait is that burnt orange entering the fray!?

Like I said, easily entertained.

curses!

2009-06-09T21:51:00.004-06:00

Now I remember why I don't sew as often as I used to. It's not hard to make catastrophic errors, despite constantly reminding myself to PAY CLOSE ATTENTION WHEN SERGING! I have done this to many times in my life to even count:

What we have here is me serging a wrong side to a wrong side, ultimately giving me an attractive serge line along a seam that should be invisible to the eye. I would have caught it sooner if I'd bothered to sew the seam first, then serge it as I do for side seams. But since this was just a short straight seam that would add a block of colour to the bottom of my dress, I just sandwiched my fabric together and began to serge with reckless abandon. To be deeply regretted the moment I went to press the seam.

Of course this happened around 10 pm, you know, when I'm at my freshest and best able to deal with serging nightmares. To fix it, I threw my dress on, decided that it would be long enough if I chopped the offending seam right off, re-serged, and made a much narrower hem than called for. I think it's all going to work out in the end. Just a moment of maniacal stress, much to late at night.

Strangely, when bad things happens in my knitting, I am able to remain placidly calm as I rip out acres of knitting and prepare to spend all my free time for the next 5 days re-knitting the bottom half of a sweater. No problemo. But sewing disasters make me want to swear every time. I think I need to start another sweater.

frida's wardrobe

2009-06-07T21:30:00.008-06:00

I've been reading the most fantastic book for the last few months. In fact, I've had it out from the library so many times that I should practically own it by now! It's called Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress: Frida's Wardrobe. It is absolutely amazing in photographs and written detail about every garment that was in Frida's dressing room at the time of her death. The following photos were taken by me from the book. Obviously.

Besides the detail on her wardrobe, the book gives a lot of interesting background on how the restoration of her garments came to be. When Frida died in 1954, her husband Diego Rivera had her dressing room sealed off from the rest of her home Casa Azul, and stipulated that 50 years must pass until it was opened, even though the rest of her home became a museum very shortly after.

Fifty years passed, and so just a few years ago, the door was opened and stock was taken. What they found was really quite amazing: all of Frida's clothing, as well as various plaster casts she'd worn over the years (because of her severe health problems and back pain) were basically intact. A bit of U.V. damage on a few pieces, but mainly just as though she'd stepped out for a few minutes. Plus tons of other stuff...I could go on and on. But really, get the book from the library yourself, or buy it if you love everything Frida. It's worth it.

I love this photo of Frida wearing a tunic-style top, and then on the page beside it, the restored outfit, just as Frida would have worn it. The book had tons of examples like this.

I tell you all about this because I've recently been feeling inspired to haul out my sewing machine and make some clothes. Like usual, I'm in desperate need of a fashion intervention, and a tight budget means that I'm probably not going to be heading for Purr (Sorry, can't find a link. Think really beautiful, indi designer fashion that's way out of my price range) anytime soon. Seeing Frida's simple but beautiful clothing makes me want to make my own. Perhaps not long lacy skirts exactly, but handmade none the less!

I've got quite a bit of fabric already, mostly purchased last fall. So it's a bit dark and heavy looking for spring/summer, but I'm going to give it a go anyway, and see what I'm can come up with. A new (slightly drab coloured) wardrobe awaits me!

happy birthday mum!

2009-06-05T10:01:00.002-06:00

Really, I have no business calling this a birthday gift because it's so late. Like 4 months late. It's so late that when I showed the finished product to Stewart, his first response was to congratulate me for being so on top of things, seeing as how my mum's birthday isn't until the new year. Um no. This is for her birthday awhile back.

But I am pleased with the way it turned out. My acrylic medium that makes regular paint into fabric paint is buried somewhere deep in the garage, so I didn't stamp the solid side, but I may yet. Sewing double-sided aprons is bit more painstaking than you'd think. It's not like a dress where you have this huge, voluminous shape in which to press your seams. With this apron, you spend a lot of time pressing the edges where the two sides meet, and it takes awhile. I finally just lowered my ironing board, rolled my desk chair up to it, and slowly plodded through the pressing.

It really didn't take me that long, and so now I'm suddenly feeling inspired to sew a few things for summer, just simple dresses and stuff for the kids. More photos to follow soon, I hope!

wee purple sweater almost done

2009-06-01T15:17:00.007-06:00

This poor blog has been suffering lately. I haven't given it any love for what seems like weeks, and even when I have, the posting has been a bit of a struggle. Summer has finally arrived and we are spending a lot of time outside, so I guess that might be one reason. I think I'll have to start posting about the flowerbed smack-down our yard's been getting - lots of perennial planting and weeding. Endless weeding.

But in the meantime, there has been a bit of knitting. I haven't been working to hard on it, but some progress has been made.

I'm almost done this little sweater, destined for an almost 4 year old. The only modification I'm likely going to make to this sweater is to put in some front neck shaping. The pattern would have you knit the front and back identically, but I know from personal experience, this never works out really great. You either end up with a sweater that you feel choked by, or if you've tried very hard to avoid this phenom, you end up with a sweater that feels normal in the front, and scooped and breezy in the back.

I'm also toying with adding on an extra inch or two to the bottom. I followed Ms. Bliss's measurents to the T, yet this is looking a bit short. Ripping out sweater hemlines is certainly not unknown to me...

secrecy is thy name!

2009-05-19T15:45:00.003-06:00

This is a secret project being made for two people, although they both probably know who they are! And so in the name of secrecy, I cannot say what I am making, but only show you this:

Sigh. The print is from Amy Butler, and the dark fuschia solid is just regular quilting cotton from Fabricland. I've had the Amy Butler fabric for over six months, but finally just chopped into it. I must admit... it was painful. The fabric is so beautiful that I think I would have been happy just leaving it on the shelf, and taking a look at it every once in awhile. But that's ridiculous, and there is already way to much fabric just sitting on my shelves. Happily, I bought a tiny bit more than I need for my project, so I'm thinking about where the rest of it should go. Lately, I'm thinking a quilt, something nice and pouffy for watching telly under. Just in time for the hot summer months.

mindless, purple knitting

2009-05-15T14:14:00.005-06:00

I decided the best way to deal with this purple knitting debacle was to get rid of said purple yarn ASAP! I called Little Brown Badger to inquire about Eden's size, and within 10 minutes of that conversation, I'd cast on and started mad, mindless knitting in the round. Knitting nirvana has returned!

By some crazy coincidence, when I'd been at the library the day before, I'd checked out Junior Knits by Debbie Bliss. With Eden's size in mind, I flipped through this book, picked this sweater in about 10 seconds, and got going.

I really love Debbie Bliss' aestetic. Really simple with classic details - the way knitting should be when you consider the work put into it. It's nice when it actually looks fashionable for, um, more than one season. The only downer about Debbie Bliss is that she's a die-hard flat knitter, but I quicly remedied that by subtracting the seam stitches, and using circular needles. There was no way I was going to knit a raglan flat.

So all is well. I've already knit 5 of the 7 1/2 body inches needed. This sweater will be done in no time, the extra wool will be returned this weekend, and purple will not darken my doorstep for a good, long time!

a giant gauge swatch

2009-05-13T15:05:00.006-06:00

I had a revelation this weekend: I hate doing pattern math. It came as a real shock after slaving over a sweater for 6 weeks that I'd hoped would be Knitty bound. That had been my latest, greatest aspiration: get into Knitty. I feel like I have so many great sweater ideas, just waiting to get knit up, but now it looks like those ideas will be waiting indefinitely. Or at least until I am not in such a rush, or dealing with so many other non-knitting related things.

This project was a disaster from the start. I'd had this idea for a long time, but got started only 2 months before the deadline. Then there was the purple wool. What was I thinking!!! I don't even like purple! At least not for an entire sweater. But I wanted to use Cascade 220, and purple was available here in town, in a large enough quantity, so I went for it.

And then there was the math. I've knit a lot of sweaters out of my head before, but just for one person at a time, in one size at a time. The math, although I was getting through it, was making my knitting very, very stressful. Knitting is not supposed to be stressful, and never has been for me until this point. Then the basement flooded, and that pretty well finished me off. Any momentum I had on the project was gone, and I suddenly realized that with all the other stress in my life, what I really needed out my knitting was endless garter stitch or something like it. Nice and mindless.

So...now what I have is 5 skeins of Cascade 220 and one giant gauge swatch. Three of the skeins are still unwound and are going to get returned for store credit this weekend. Of the other 3 remaining, 2 are wound, and the other one is pictured above, nearly knit up. I'm trying to figure out what to do with what's left. Legwarmers? Or am I about to dig myself into an even deeper hole?

sweet, sweet cashmere

2009-05-11T14:39:00.005-06:00

After weeks of inactivity, I decided to get out and do something. Make 1 just changed ownership, and the new owner Bess Mullaney posted on the M1 blog that there was drop-in spinning this weekend. So I carted my wheel over there to check things out. Fabulous! Bess seems really down to earth, and was asking us about the sort of things we'd like to see in the store. And as a huge bonus, she had a giant bin of random bits of fibre that we were welcome to spin with while we were there.

Another girl and I immediately gravitated towards several beautiful chunks of roving that were dyed brilliant shades of pink and red. It was really soft, and I was thinking that it must be a silk/merino blend. Nope. After I'd been spinning for an hour or so, Annie showed up and told us that we were spinning pure cashmere. She'd been there when Amy, one of the store's former owners had dyed that piece herself.

It was a huge challenge for me. I'd never spun anything with a staple length as short as that, so it often got away on me, and drafting was nearly impossible. In the end, I just split the roving into skinny pieces, drafted it slightly, and spun it. I think I ended up with about 40 grams of sport weight yarn. I'm not sure what I'll do with it, but it sure is pretty.

It was a really big treat. Maybe the first and last time I'll get to spin cashmere! I think it's pretty dang expensive stuff!

the sum total of my creative genius

2009-05-07T02:56:00.004-06:00

Under normal circumstances, I seem to churn stuff out. Always making. Must. Keep. Making. It's almost compulsive, and I'm usually pleased with what I am able to do, considering that being an artist/creative person often takes a backseat to book-keeping duties for our business, and being a mum to two busy toddlers. But lately...blah.

When our basement got flooded, it's like the disaster restoration crew left with all my creative energy, along with the wet drywall and ruined carpet. The knitting projects I do have on the go haven't been touched in weeks. I keep feeling like I want to do some drawing or painting, or even start a different knitting project, but with my supplies being divided between my garage, a warehouse somewhere in Calgary where things are drying out, and various odds & ends stashed in bedroom drawers and boxes around the house, I just can't seem to get motivated to start anything.

After the kids woke up from their naps, Fritz flashed me a toothy grin and suggested we go outside and "do chalks". After I drew a few obligatory kitties, rockets, and bubbles, Fritz lost interest, and ditched me for his bicycle. I sat on our brick patio for a little while longer and did this:

Yes, it's come to this. Sidewalk chalk drawing. And rather uninspired on top of it all. But if felt good to at least draw some simple lines with the crappiest of art materials. It's the best thing I've done in quite some time.

post-flood blogging

2009-04-30T18:03:00.005-06:00

Seriously, it seems like the only thing I ever blog about lately is Juliet. It's in the final stages, although I think I've said that the last couple of posts mentioning it. But really, this time it is in the final stages. All finishing work is done, it just needs a couple of extra inches added onto the bottom and a final block. It's ridiculously short as the pattern is written:

Other than that, there is very little knitting going on. I need to get some projects going. Admittedly, motivation has been very low, post-flood. And at least half my stash is in a warehouse somewhere in northeast Calgary drying out. I feel a trip to a yarn store coming on. Yeah, that's what I need: some soothing retail yarn therapy.

we now return you to regularly scheduled programming...

2009-04-24T14:58:00.012-06:00

It's been awhile since I last posted. That's because when I got home on Tuesday after being away for 5 days, the first thing I heard when I walked through the door was a torrent of water running somewhere in the basement. It didn't take long to discover that a pipe in the mechanical room had burst several days before, filling the entire basement with just enough water to ruin every last square inch of carpet, and the drywall and insulation in the walls up to the 4 foot mark. As I type, a disaster restoration crew is downstairs putting the finishing touches on the basement dry-out. We estimate that it's going to be about 5 months before the repairs are complete. It would be a bit sooner, except that since the basement is gutted anyway, we may as well make a few changes while we are at it, and that equals more time.

But onward! We were away visiting my parents in Medicine Hat, which also happens to be home of a really great Value Village. The Value Villages in Calgary tend to be really expensive (considering that it's all second hand in the first place), and generally picked over. Treasures abound in Medicine Hat!

Looking for clothing in that place generally takes up to much of my mental capacity, but there are always three areas I check without fail: books, scarves, and jewelry. I found this book amidst other crafting relics:

It's pretty fantastic even thought it's intended for machine knitters. There are lots interesting details a hand knitter can pick up and use. I love this page on various pocket applications:

They also have some really interesting sweater designs like this one on the right:

The book was published in 1961, and the fashion reflects that. Nevertheless, there are some cool ideas that could be reworked for today.

My second big find were these silk scarves:

They are real gems I think. I don't think of myself as a pack rat, but there are a few things I buy compulsively, without any real project or purpose in mind, and silk scarves are one of those things. A few of these caught my eye because they seemed vintagey. I don't know what I'll end up doing with my silk scarf collection. I always see strange books around that are themed along the lines of "make an entire wardrobe out of silk scarves" and I'm not quite there yet.

And lastly, the bracelets!

I found the one on the left at V.V. the last time I was in Medicine Hat, and have worn endlessly, and then found the one on the right this time. I'm thrilled with both of them, even though I do feel a bit hippy wearing them. They definitely have that natural, earthy feel . So I found some great stuff for next to nothing, yet I can't help but feel a little on the blasé side about it. My basement is a wreck.

on the home stretch

2009-04-15T14:27:00.005-06:00

Juliet is almost done, well sort of. I've finished knitting all the parts, and a couple of days ago, I got down to the unpleasant business of blocking. Blocking turned out to be almost a non-job. Just the sleeves needed a little bit of pinning and spritzing.

This was the first time I'd worked with a stitch pattern in a long time, and for the most part, I loved it. The pattern was just easy enough to knit while watching television, and I really love the reversible pattern, especially on the bodice. The sleeve pattern is almost identical to the bodice pattern except that it is a 16 row repeat instead of and 8 row repeat. This makes the sleeves more like an elongated ribbing, which is why they needed blocking in the first place. But the bodice with its smaller repeat was really quite amazing to knit. I love that as it came off the needles, it was turning into a perfectly flat fabric before my eyes.

Now all that's left is a bit of sewing, working the neckband, and then picking up the provisional cast on and knitting like mad in more garter stitch to make this thing longer!

The only downer is that it is becoming more and more apparent that I severely underestimated the sizing. I'd better get to the gym.

mohair mania

2009-04-13T13:16:00.008-06:00

Last fall, I knit Stewart and Fritz father & son sweaters. All winter long, Stewart and Fritz could be seen sporting their sweaters, basking in father/son matchiness. Stewart has long thought it would just be so dang delightful if Liesl and I also had matching sweaters...in other words, get knittin' Marcia!

I just finished the pink cardigan for myself, and would love to do a matching one, but alas, I've only got 1/2 a sweaters worth of the pink yarn left. So I thought I'd dye some of my new wool in a light blue colour, and make her something stripey!

This is the first time ever that a dye job came out exactly like what I wanted! The colour is perfect! But the yarn that is being spun is another story. As soon as the wool was dry, I used my drop spindle to spin a sample:

It is awful looking and feeling yarn when plied together into a 2-ply. It has more in common with rope than yarn, so I figured I'd over spun it when I spun the singles. I've compensated for that now that I've gotten going on my wheel, and when I ply the single back on itself, it looks much better, much loftier.

The next thing to overcome is the irregularity of this wool! When I pulled out a few chunks from my giant box, I regrettably didn't take a real close look. Now that I'm spinning the stuff, it's telling me a whole different story. It's saying, actually, I'm at least 50% crazy mohair, and my first love in life is shedding all over you, and soon, making your daughter feel itchier than she ever has before in her very young life.

I guess you get what you pay for, and before I do any future dyeing or spinning with this stuff, I'm going to have to do some careful sorting. Mohair anyone?

snip, snip!

2009-04-08T10:09:00.009-06:00

Remember this post where I got the worst hair cut of my life? Well, I'd been giving it some thought, and the way I figure it, I don't need to pay someone $60 for a piece of crap hair cut! I'm sure I can do that myself for free. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned my plans for at-home hair cutting to my sister, and as it turned out, she has a friend who used to be a hair stylist, and still has his license. So those two trooped off to a beauty supply house, and brought me home this:

All this for just over the cost of a bad haircut! A steal, I say! So for the last few days, I've been pouring over these:

And here's my first victim: Fritz with a head full of curls at his 3rd birthday just a couple of weeks ago.

I'd cut his hair before, snipping away at his curls with my embroidery scissors. I don't know how I managed... professional scissors, even the low-end ones I got make such a difference! So a couple of nights ago, I got down to business, and this was the result. I love him with short hair, so little boyish. The cut went pretty well, the only big mistake I made was trimming his hairline at the bottom in the very back. I started a little to high, and all of a sudden there was no turning back. I tried to cut some layers in to soften it a bit, and that helped, but it's still a bit funny looking from the back. Stewart gave me some encouragement - he says that for a guy, the difference between a good cut and a bad one is about a week. Let's hope so.

In the meantime, in this house, no one's hair is safe.

tools of the trade

2009-04-06T14:51:00.006-06:00

Juliet is coming along. The biggest complaint I hear about this pattern is the boredom of knitting up the vast expanse of garter stitch. Everything you've heard is true. It is kind of painful. But I do love the way garter stitch looks, so it's worth it. I didn't realize it until I checked my gauge that it really does take nearly twice as many rows of knitting to make up garter stitch than stockinette stitch. I think the other thing that makes it a tough go is the fine gauge of the yarn.

My biggest complaint about this sweater is not the pattern, but the yarn. Groan. Before I dyed it, way back here, it was a light limey green colour. The perfect colour to camouflage vegetable matter. This project hasn't been as portable as I'd hoped, because I dare not leave home without my equipment:

Every row, I stop at least 3 times, and as many as 6 times to pick junk out of this yarn. So far I've found burrs, little sticks, and straw. I was yanking them out by hand before I realized that some of the veggie matter was really embedded (but still extremely scratchy), and I was annihilating my yarn by clumsily picking it out. So I pressed an old pair of tweezers into service so that I could literally drag this crap out. My photo shows 6 little loops of masking tape covered in straw etc, but the reality of it is that I've already filled at least 6 times as many, and there is no end in sight. The result (so far) is a lovely, soft, squishy feeling sweater. But it's taking a little more work than I'd planned.

I think it's looking good. I knit an extra 1/2 inch on the body, and now I'm about to get going on the bodice and sleeves. I did end up doing the provisional cast on, and I'm glad I did because it looks short to me, even with the extra 1/2 inch I added. Plus I ended up knitting the x-small size after measuring my gauge and reading so many comments on Ravelry that this thing fits like a sack. I'm normally a medium or a large, so it seems overly optimistic to be going down to such a small size. Worst case scenario, I think I know 2 gals that are both interested in receiving a teal sweater.

eccentric glamour coming to a hausfrau near you

2009-04-04T10:24:00.003-06:00

I think about fashion a lot, although you’d never know it from the yoga pants I am frequently caught sporting. I just finished a book called Eccentric Glamour: Creating an Insanely More Fabulous You by Simon Doonan. This is a book I’d recommend you take out of the library, not necessarily run out and buy. Doonan writes in a style that I find a little exhausting, nevertheless, he makes many salient points, and many that I can relate to.

One thing that Doonan makes clear from the get-go is that he abhors ho style, also known as porno chic. He feels that dressing super sexy is not the only way to go to get some attention. In fact, he goes so far as to say that porno chic is a conformist trend. I tend to agree. Go to any mall and see for yourself… everyone looks the same. I also had to laugh at his description of double cleavage (which is to be avoided at all costs!) comprised of boob and butt-crack cleavage. Super yuck. I just don’t get it.

Along those same lines, Doonan rails against denim. I wouldn’t say that I’m addicted to denim, but I definitely have a couple of pairs of jeans that are in regular rotation. Doonan recommends that we get rid of our jeans immediately. All of them. Because if you don’t have jeans, you won’t wear them, and you’ll be forced to come up with something infinitely more glamourous, such as a sequined Mexican dirndl or black gabardine gauchos…and that means you’ll have more fun. Getting rid of jeans (he hopes) will also help stem the butt-crack craze.

I thought about getting rid of my jeans for um, all of 5 seconds. I won’t be getting rid of them, but I think I would like to wear them less. I mean, is there anything more status quo than jeans? I know denim was a real revolution in the 60’s and 70’s, but let’s face it… the bloom is off the rose. It’s pretty boring these days even in its most extreme interpretations. So I am going to give that a try, at least to wear them far less often. Can someone tell me where I can find a sequined Mexican dirndl?!

It’s an amusing book, but there were a few chapters that were just so ridiculous, I couldn’t help but give them just a quick skim. Overall, it’s a book about reinventing yourself, and I love that idea. I moved around a lot in my twenties, and I loved that wherever I went, I had the chance to completely reinvent myself wherever I went. And I often did.

I guess what this book made me think is…why yoga pants, and not a fabulous Jackie O. style lime green cocktail dress? Really? I’m a stay at home mum, and it strikes me that if I don’t wear whatever I want when I’m at home, it’s never going to get worn. I don’t have an external workplace where I can subject my fellow employees to my bizarre fashion choices, and there is probably no one less judgmental than a three year old. So here’s to future eccentric (and possibly glamourous) fashion choices, to be worn with reckless abandon, and worn often!

the giant box o' wool has landed

2009-04-02T09:18:00.015-06:00

It's finally here, and it has been so worth waiting for. A couple of months ago, I ordered 10 pounds of roving ends from The Sheep Shed, a really unusual business run by Carol & Carl Lee. They sell the roving ends that Brown Sheep Wool Co. has left over. They also sell a lot of other odds and ends, including assorted bags from their 600 lb bales of wool. Yes, bales of wool that weigh as much as farm livestock.

To save an extra $20 USD, I had it sent to the campground my parents were staying at in Palm Springs. My wool got to go camping for an extra month, plus take a meandering route through Oregon on the way back home.

It was pretty exciting for Fritz and Liesl to open up this box, the wool was packed so tightly that it immediately began expanding upon opening!

It is really wonderful, from what I can tell so far. Of the first two chunks that I grabbed off the top, one was about 8 feet long, and the other was around 18 inches, and I imagine that there is every length in between. Little Brown Badger, who has ordered from The Sheep Shed a couple of times now, had sent me a sample a few months ago so that I could give it a spinning test drive, and it's really nice. And since I dye in such a random fashion as it is, I don't mind at all if there are long or short pieces all mixed together. So now I have a near lifetime supply of wool. I estimate there to be about 7 sweaters worth of wool, plus extra for random dyeing and spinning.

And they threw this in!

It's a few ounces of some oddball stuff they also sell. I'm looking forward to spinning it. It's really curly compared to the merino I've spun in the past.

And now for something completely different:

My friend Christine of Dark Cloud Blue Sky fame recently blogged about a Community Clothes Rack she started. I love this idea. She started a swap clothing rack that anyone can contribute to or take from. It co-exists alongside a Community Book Rack. Maybe other people will start a Community Small Household Goods Rack or a Slightly Used Sporting Goods Rack. I suppose the danger lies in everyone dumping their used junk that is more worthy of a landfill than a swap rack. I hope the clothes rack takes off though!

the best thing i've ever made

2009-03-30T14:24:00.007-06:00

It really is the best thing I've ever made. Maybe that's because I was involved in the process of making it from the dyeing of the wool, spinning it and finally knitting it. As I mentioned a few posts earlier, the design is Amy Swenson's, and the pattern is brilliant. I imagine that this sweater would be universally flattering on nearly any figure. It's really good.

And despite thinking my dyed roving was way to pink, I love it! The colour is great, and actually goes with most of the clothing I already own. Most of the time I just wear a tank underneath this sweater, and the merino is so soft that it never bothers me. And the sleeve length is really good. I think it will be awhile before I make another sweater with full length sleeves. They really just aren't practical when you have little kids. I must wash my hands a hundred times a day, and with long sleeves anything, I end up walking around with soggy cuffs all the time.

I like the eyelet detail along the raglan lines from increasing. That's a design element I'll definitely use again and again.

To top it all off, this morning I was at The Knitting Room, and Annie was working. Actually, she manages The Knitting Room, and she's done wonders with that store since she started there a couple of months ago... you wouldn't even recognize the place. I'll definitely be back soon. Anyway, Annie is the gal that taught me how to use acid dyes last summer, so it was ridiculously gratifying to show her what I'd done since taking her class!

I'm definitely going to dye some more wool soon for another sweater. I know I can't spin for every single sweater I make - sometimes it is really nice to use a commercial yarn when you just want to get going! But I won't hesitate to do it again. (Plus I need to make that spinnning wheel pay for itself somehow.) The next sweater I spin for, I think I'd like to design it myself, just to have control of the process from start to finish. I think my mum's worried I'm going to start ranching sheep in my back yard, but I've assured her, that is part of the process I never want to be a part of.

endless blue garter stitch awaits!

2009-03-26T15:16:00.006-06:00

Yay!! I started swatching last night for Juliet. Which means that the stripey black thing is all done, but I'll save that sad story for another time. But anyway, swatching has begun (and is finished). I'm all set to cast on later tonight if I have time.

The dark blue speckles are not looking as much like tweed as I'd hoped... more like a ball point pen exploded on my yarn. But I can live with that. The yarn itself is really beautiful. Very soft, and has an almost felted quality to it. I didn't look at it all that close before I over dyed it, so I'm not sure if it came that way, or if the felting took place during the big steaming it got.

WARNING: Technical knitting jargon ahead!

I've been fretting a bit over how to deal with the fact that according to the pattern yarn requirements, I have just enough yarn to knit this sweater, and, that alot of people on Ravelry have made one modification to it: extra length to the garter stitch part of it. Which happens to be the part you are supposed to knit first.

I've been worried about adding a few extra rows of length to the body, and then running short by 10 yards on the sleeves. It finally dawned on me last night what to do: a provisional cast on. So I'm going to do a provisional cast on, knit the suggested number of inches for the body, complete the top and sleeves, heck, I can even sew it together. Then at the very end, I'll pick up my cast on, and knit on downwards until I have used every last scrap of yarn, saving just enough to cast off.

I hope this works. As far as I can tell, the only downer is that the front edge of each side of the sweater will be off by 1/2 a stitch from picking up the other side of the provisional cast on, which may result in a tiny blip. I am doing my best to just get over it! Stop being such a perfectionist! Enjoy the extra length on your sweater, darn it!

all socked out

2009-03-24T14:15:00.007-06:00

This is it for awhile. I have been madly knitting socks for the past few months, and I've officially hit the wall. The hilarious thing is, I haven't even been making interesting socks, just round and round and round in stockinette stitch socks.

These are kind of strange because of the colour. A few posts back I overdyed this sock yarn. When I began knitting these socks, I couldn't figure out what was going on because of the dark striping that was occuring. It finally dawned on me that the yarn I had overdyed was self-striping sock yarn, and it was now just doing its own thing. The dark blue areas of the original yarn became even darker. Once I figured out what was going on, I decided that I really liked it, although I'm not sure if I'll overdye sock yarn again anytime soon.

Although my sock knitting has been pretty mundane, I think I accomplished a lot in the last few months. I figured out my ultimate toe and heel method, which was really like being hit with sock nirvana squarely over the head.

Maybe in a couple of months I'll have another go. I'd like to design some socks that actually have a bit of a pattern to them, but not so frothy looking that I feel ridiculous wearing them. I don't want to look like a princess, you know?

transformation

2009-03-22T14:05:00.008-06:00

I've had this kicking around for a few years, and think I finally found a use for it.

It's really nice yarn, dk 2-ply from Morehouse Merino, but once again, the wrong colour. It's a light lime green, although you'd never know it from the photo. I snagged it at a big sale a couple of years ago, and at the time, I recall thinking to myself that I would look just fine in a light lime green. Clearly, I was delusional. It's a colour I never wear, and generally avoid. So it has sat around for quite some time, until last night. I figured I'd throw it into ye olde dye pot and see what I came up with. Worst case scenario was that it was going to get thrifted if it became truly hideous. Here's what I got!

It turned out ok. Actually, I like it a fair bit. The colour is a little more intense than I'd planned, and because I still haven't thrown out that blue dye from this post, I ended up with little speckles of bright blue dye in some areas of the yarn. I sort of knew that might happen...but I was to lazy to mix up some fresh blue so I just added the crystallized stuff that's been sitting in the fridge since last summer to some teal. I'm hoping that it will look tweedy when it's knitted up. Here's a close up of the speckles.

I have just enough to make Juliet from Debbie Bliss Knitting Magazine Fall/Winter 2008.

But no knitting (or even swatching!) on this for a few days yet. I've decided that I have to be really mean to myself, and the deal is, no knitting until the stripey sweater that I started before Christmas is seamed up and ready to wear. It's been laying in a blocked, folded pile in the basement for a couple of weeks, so great is my enthusiasm for that one.

sigh

2009-03-18T15:06:00.004-06:00

Progress this week has been slow...on all of my projects. And the pink sweater officially ground to a halt about 3 days ago when I realized exactly how inconsistent my spinning is. Lovely, yes. Consistent, nein.

I knit the body top-down, and then a few nights ago, I picked up the stitches on an armhole and began to get going on the sleeves. I hadn't knit for a few days, and so ended up knitting way past my bedtime. If you have kids, you know that no matter how late you stay up, you still have to get up at the crack of dawn, reguardless of your wild night of knitting.

After an hour or two I suddenly realized my gauge had changed, and not by a little. What was once an aran weight yarn was now hard pressed to call itself worsted. Crap. I've let a few days go by, thinking about how to fix this. My first instinct was to block the living daylights out of it to get rid of all the puckering where body meets sleeve, but I know that's not going to make me happy. The sleeve is supposed to be fairly roomy, and this sudden change in gauge is going to make it appear tapered. So...rip, rip. This photo shows the offending area, although it's hard to see in photo, direct sunlight and all.

I'm going to rip out back to where I picked up the sleeve (after carefully measuring my new gauge, of course) and when I knit around the sleeve the first time, I'm going to stick in some make ones to account for what I lost when I changed skeins. Alas, there is no more of the fat yarn left, only the scrawny stuff. What was I thinking?

a knitting marathon

2009-03-13T10:35:00.012-06:00

Lately, I've been thinking I need a marathon project, you know, a true slog. Something that is going to take just ages to complete. I need a go-to project, something that won't get done so fast (or need finishing work done until the bitter end). I had been thinking maybe a blanket - that's a big project. I started feeling some blanket mojo when I saw the Heathen Housewives amazing sock yarn blankie, and would love to do something like it, but I don't really have the odds and ends in my stash to even make a dent in something that size. Plus after further consideration, I'm having trouble getting revved up about knitting on a blanket for a year. About the Heathen Housewive's blankie - GO TO THE LINK! Scroll down and look at it in all it's sock yarnie-ness glory, it's really worth a look.

So now I'm thinking really complicated sweater. Aesthetically, I've always gravitated towards sweaters that are knitted in stockinette stitch with maybe another simple design element somewhere. Simple is the key word. I generally don't like wearing really busy sweaters. But just recently, we had another cold snap of sub-zero weather, and that got me to thinking about knitting the most ornate, cabley, bobblely oversized sweater I could get my hands on. I want to be cozy! So far these are the two front-runners:

This beauty was in Vogue Knitting's Fall 2007 as part of their silver anniversary collection. (A much better image of it, and the free pattern can be found here.) It's by Shiri Mor, and I love the way the model looks as if she's being swallowed by the sweater. I checked the pattern, and there is some serious knitting involved here - 2652 yards worth in fact.

And then I just saw this in the latest Debbie Bliss Knitting Magazine (Spring/Summer 2009). It seems like it would be pretty great, although the neckline worries me. It looks a bit like the front of the collar is hitting the model in a spot on her neck that would get tiresome pretty fast. So I'm not sure yet. The yarn requirement for this one is nearly the same, logging in at around 2500 yards . That's a lot of knitting, for either sweater!

The other route I could go is colour work. Maybe do a crazy Kaffe Fassett masterpiece in fair isle or intarsia... but I'm not sure I can handle dealing with all those tangled strings at this point in my life. This is ultimately supposed to be relaxing! I'd love to know what the general consensus is out there - which sweater is better? Or are they both a giant waste of my time?!

the pinkest sweater of them all

2009-03-10T10:11:00.010-06:00

In my entire life, never has knitting a sweater been so thrilling. I mean, knitting is always good. But knitting with my own hand spun yarn, no matter how pink it is, takes it to a whole new level.

After much consideration, I finally decided to knit the sweater that I had in mind when I was spinning. And I'm so glad I did. The pattern is by Amy M. Swenson and it's called Amy's Basic Cardigan, although I don't know where the pattern is available from other than directly from her. It's a top-down raglan with 3/4 sleeves, and eyelets along the raglan lines.

The pink is growing on me. I love it. Every little pinky variation I see as I'm knitting it up makes me feel completely giddy. The other thing I'm thrilled about is that the yarn I spun actually knits up to the gauge I intended. This seems like nothing short of a miracle considering how inexperienced I am in the spinning department. It's knitting up at 18 stitches/4", which means this sweater is going to be done in no time! The last few projects I've done have been on much smaller needles with finer wool, and suddenly with an aran weight yarn, I feel like a speed knitter!

best pizza ever

2009-03-06T20:18:00.008-07:00

We used to get take-out a lot, sometimes as often as once a week (whenever I was feeling really frazzled). Really an expensive habit when you start adding it up. But for the last couple of months we've doing much better, more like once a month. And the take-out we order most often is pizza.

Except, I never even like the pizza we get in. Or rather, I like it because it's convenient, not because it tastes great. Over the last few years, we've ordered pizza from every place around here within a 20 block radius. I like thin-crust, and the few thin-crust places around here are pretty grim. So for the last while I've been trying to figure out what makes a good pizza.

I have to say, yesterday I made pizza that would exceed anything we've had ordering in. I'm still working on getting it just right. I think the only change I would make next time is working a little harder at getting the crust thinner. It continues rising while you're putting toppings on it, so this pizza ended up being not quite thin crust. Medium crust perhaps.

As you can see, Fritz and Liesl were hard at work sneaking olives and cheese.

I got a few books out of the library last month on pizza making, and one of the best tips they offered me was to not roll out the crust. Instead, use your fingers to carefully work the dough out into a thin roundish shape. That way, all the air bubbles don't get steam-rolled out with a rolling pin, giving it a really nice irregular surface. The other thing they suggested was to throw a small handful of whole-wheat flour into the dough. This also made a big difference. The all white flour doughs I've been making for the last while had been a little blah.

This was my favorite one: layers of salt & pepper, sliced tomatoes, bocconcini (fresh mozza), pesto (out of a jar), and a sprinkling of Parmesan. Mmmmm.

stripey returns!

2009-03-05T08:09:00.004-07:00

What to say about this sweater? It's done! The knitting anyway. It was spared from being ripped out by last minute common sense. This sweater has taken much longer than I thought it would, and has languished for quite some time in my knitting basket. Enthusiasm for it had long ago departed, and just a few nights ago I was already thinking to myself, I should just rip this thing out and use this lovely yarn for a more worthy cause. I picked up the partially done sleeve on my needles and realized I only had a sleeve cap and one more sleeve to go before being finished. I was crazy for thinking I should rip this out - I was so close to being done!

So onward I knit, and this is now laying in the guest room downstairs, sloppily blocked. Other than a pair of socks, I don't really have anything on the go right now. The night before last I woke at 2 a.m. and lay awake for 2 hours, tossing and turning with the possibilities of what to knit next (and the anxiety that nothing was planned!) I'd better get something going soon, because I need to get some sleep!

leaving well enough alone

2009-03-01T09:21:00.007-07:00

I was always a kid who broke stuff. Always. Luckily, it was usually my stuff (or my sisters). I was curious and just wanted see...could that arm bend just a little farther?...would the string break if I pulled a little harder? ...just how strong was it? etc etc.

I think as an adult, I have the same tendency to wreck stuff, just in a different way. I take things one step to far, and occasionally ruin whatever I'm making. Last summer I knit a sweater. I loved the fit, loved everything about it, except the colour. I threw it into a dye bath on my stove and simmered it for 1/2 an hour. I ruined the sweater and wasted hours of knitting time. The colour dyed unevenly (you can actually see rings from the burner dyed into it) and the yarn now has the texture of a Brillo pad. I still have that sweater as a reminder of my destructive tendencies, and because it's not even fit to thrift.

So here I have approximately 1260 yards of very pink yarn. My spinning is wildly uneven, so it ranges in aran to worsted weight - it should be a treat trying to achieve a consistent gauge.

When I was spinning it, I was already thinking to myself...yep, that's going to need to go into a grey dye bath to tone it down a bit. But I keep thinking of the sweater I ruined last summer.

So I think I'm going to try and embrace the wild pinkness of this yarn and just use it the way it is. It seems inevitable I will ruin it otherwise.

so I can weave. what now?

2009-02-26T15:10:00.005-07:00

This is the what I did yesterday: wound some ugly old self-striping sock yarn onto a bobbin, and wove until I ran out of yarn. This is what I got:

I wish I would have just dressed this loom with some warp yarn I actually liked, and just gone for it! I mean, this is weaving, not rocket science. But for some reason I thought I needed to do a "tester" before I did something for real.

I think I could really love weaving if my loom wasn't such a piece of crap, (how's that for being gracious considering it was free!) or maybe it's just badly in need of servicing. Do looms need servicing? Really, I'm sure somthing is wrong with the loom. My wrists were super sore from changing shafts after the few minutes it took me to do this. The shafts keep catching on each other, and changing the shafts is a two handed procedure on this stiff old thing, so I had to put down the shuttle between every throw. Groan.

But despite the hardships, the end product is so satisfying, even in scrubby old sock yarn. I definitely want to weave something nice soon, but first I need to find someone to look at my loom, and tell me what's wrong! No one would weave if it was this hard!

it's lookin' mighty pink

2009-02-18T10:23:00.007-07:00

This weekend I got down to the task at hand and began to spin the giant pink roving I dyed last week. I spent all of 5 minutes using my drop spindle to make a quick sample of what I was hoping to end up.

I'm going to do a three ply, but for the sample, I just Navajo plied the single ply I had spun to get an idea of what the final yarn weight would be like.

As you can see, I'm a pretty inexperienced spinner. The girl I leaned from told the class I was in that we were all making designer yarn (ie. thick/thin yarn) and that once we became really proficient spinners, it would be hard to achieve the unevenness of our first yarn, if that was the effect we were going for. Well, I am certainly having no trouble in the designer yarn department. I'm a really uneven spinner, and because I don't spin enough, that's unlikely to change anytime soon.

As soon as the sample was done, I started to spin singles like there was no tomorrow! I'm not sure what to do. It is so pink. I feel a bit silly being shocked about that - like didn't I know what I would get when I dyed the roving that colour? I'll see what the final yarn looks like and then decide, but at the moment, I'm thinking I should dip the finished yarn into a grey dye bath and cook it again. Ugh. I don't really want to do that, but I also want a sweater I'll wear.

I should know in a few days...I'm almost finished spinning my 3rd bobbin of singles.