Channelling her inner Laura

Zebula has been reading (and having bits read to her) the Little House books for the past few weeks.  I read and re-read those books when I was a kid, and they’re great!  It’s nice to relive them through her.  Zebula’s friend A, who has also been reading the Little House books, incidentally, has a great sunbonnet that a relative of hers made.  Zebula asked me ages ago to make her one.  And a few times since starting the “Laura books”.  So when I mentioned this afternoon that I might do a little sewing, she asked again.  So I dug up a pattern, and here was the result, a couple of hours later:

I would like to point out that nobody but Zebula was responsible for her clothing choices today.

The pattern was apparently printed somewhere in the 70’s, and had been passed on to the author by her grandmother.  It’s straightforward, and now that I have the pattern pieces drafted on paper and cut out, I can easily make more.  The only change I made is that instead of using three layers of stiff muslin between the brim layers, I used heavy fusible interfacing.  Not exactly traditional.  I liked making it, and Zebula seems pretty happy with the result – she was disappointed when she went biking later that she couldn’t wear it under her helmet.

I finished my No-Gap Wrap.  That’s the one I complained last week was too long.  I ended up washing and drying it, and now the length is perfect, but it’s still a little loose in the neckline.  I’ll stabilize it with a row of crochet.  Someday.

And I made slipper socks for C, who drives me to choir.  Quick and easy.  When asked what colour she likes, she said “not green”.  This ought to do:

The flower is one of the tulips I planted last fall, and then forgot all about until they just started growing a few weeks ago.  They’re pretty, but only about 25 cm tall.

Speaking of gardening, I got all excited about this yesterday.  Cheap and easy!  I’m going to make three.  Apparenly, the yield is great, and it’s just the thing to do for the south-facing side of my house, where the tomatoes are going to go.  That part is all pavement, which is a shame, since it gets tonnes of sunlight.

Here’s the garden last Sunday:

And last, but not least (I know, I should post more often so there aren’t so many pictures every time…), I need to mark a departure:

See that?  That’s the corner where our Poang chair used to be.  After more than 10 years of faithful service, it finally gave up.  While I was sitting in it.  Yep.  It broke.  With an impressive set of warning cracks.  Those who were at Lauzon Lake with us last summer will understand why this is giving me a complex.

It’s spring!

Yesterday was amazingly beautiful!  I woke up early, went to the Farmer’s market (by bus.  Much better than going by car – you don’t have to deal with the ridiculously inadequate parking lot that way), had apple fritters while there, came home, hung up some laundry, did some yard work, had lunch, sat in the sun knitting and drinking beer, hung out, went out for sushi with some friends for dinner, ate to the point of discomfort (ok, that last part was great up to the discomfort part).  All while wearing just jeans and a t-shirt for most of it.  No socks!  No coats!  No hats (well, a sunhat for some of it)!

I love weather like yesterday.  The high was 21 Celsius.  The whole summer would be like that, if I ruled the world.

I’m a little weather-giddy.  Today is cooler (high of about 12) and windy, but still sunny, and tomorrow will be about as warm, but rainy.  I’m glad about the rain, actually, because the garden is very dry.

Another thing that happened yesterday is that Zebula got holes poked into her ears.  She took it very well, and claims today that it doesn’t hurt anymore.

She looks so grown up it makes me a little sad.  It’s not just the earrings.  Yesterday we went shopping for clothes for her, and she’s almost outgrown the local (ie. that I can walk to) kids’ store.

I am *this* close to having finished the No-Gap Wrap.  Looking back in my posts, I see that I didn’t mention this one at all!  That’s what happens when I post this sporadically, I guess.  I started it in early March out of Sublime Soya Cotton DK.  I got most of the way through the body and saw that it suffers from the same problem most sweaters built for ‘big girls’ do.  The shoulders are ridiculously far apart.  You can even see it in a lot of photos – the shoulders in a cap-sleeved sweater falling off the model’s shoulder.  Which is all silly, because most people’s shoulders are about the same distance apart (with some variation for people like swimmers, people who have bigger frames, etc.).  It doesn’t follow that if a person is carrying some extra pounds, their shoulder bones suddenly spread farther apart.    Anyway, I took an inch off either side by making the armholes a little deeper, and it helped.  The back neckline is lace, and so it’s a little loose.  I’m going to stabilize it with some single crochet to see if it firms it up a little.  Also, the sleeves are really long.  I’m going to recheck the gauge (sure, now that it’s all done…  For the record, I did do a gauge swatch and everything was hunky-dory).

Here’s the front yard as of today:

See that red in the periwinkle?  That’s a tulip!

Stuff

After a short bout of moodiness, I think Spring has come to stay.  We got tantalizingly warm weather late last week, leading us to believe the weather was changing for the better, and then last Monday we woke to about 10 cm of snow.  I know, I know, we get an early April snowstorm every year, and yet we’re always surprised.  Anyway, that was all gone by Wednesday, and it’s been nice, though chilly, since.

First off, I want to say that my choir did itself proud on Friday.  I’ve sung the St. Matthew Passion twice now, and this one was by far the better one.  The soloists were fantastic, and the choir did a fabulous job.   On to the next show, in less than a month!

I’m learning Java, both because my brain needs to resolidify after almost 7 years of slowly turning to goo, and because I might be gainfully employed in the fall, and need to upgrade my skillset.  I haven’t done any kind of programming in ages, and it’s proving difficult for me to wrap my mind around it.  But it feels good, in a weird way.

The annual egg hunt happened this morning for Easter, though it was jelly beans rather than chocolate eggs.  Those things that pass for chocolate eggs are either disgusting or too expensive to buy in large quantities and scatter around the house.  So I, I mean, the Easter Bunny opted for the jelly beans and the kids got a chocolate bunny at the end.  Except that the Easter Bunny didn’t get anything for me (I got something for Dr. Thingo, and my parents who were visiting, and never thought to get something for myself).  Zebula noticed right away and wondered why I would have been missed.  The Easter Bunny needs to get his act together by next year, or he’s going to blow his cover.

I finally tore out the carpet in my living/dining room a couple of weeks ago.  It only took a few hours, and the result was surprisingly good!

I can’t believe a) the previous owners covered this up and b) it took us so long to get rid of the carpet.  Dr. Thingo was very apprehensive, but this is actually tolerable until we get around to having it repaired and refinished (or replaced), which, given how fast things usually happen around here, could be a while.  But I’m very happy about it all.  The floor is much easier to clean up (really, why would anybody want to carpet an eating area??), and the light and the mood of the room are much better.

I have finished knitted things!

This is the Necco Wafer Hoodie (I have no idea why it’s called that…)

I like it!  It’s cute!  I might make a bigger version for Vorlon.

This is a finishing job I got from a fellow choir member. She had started it many years ago for her son.  She found it recently, and was wondering if I could finish it for her, so that she could give it to her granddaughter (yes, the daugther of the boy it was originally intended for).  The yarn is Patons Astra, and the pattern was from a booklet I didn’t have the good sense to photograph before I gave it back.  The pattern is obviously a little dated – the sleeves are tighter than what we do now, and the ribbing is more form-fitting, making for some significant blousing.  But it turned out well.  The pieces were all done, but for half of one sleeve.  I had to redo one of the front pieces because the ribbing had been done with the larger needle, and was therefore bigger than the ribbing on the rest.  Also, the armholes were all about an inch too short, so I redid those.  Then I made the collar and finished it up.  Luckily, my gauge was close enough to hers that I didnt’ need to fiddle with needle sizes.  It turned out pretty well!  And I got some delicious smelling lotion from Hawaii as a thank you!  Yum!

Oh, here’s the garden as of last Sunday (April 5).  Not much change from the week before, though you can see the crocuses if you squint, to the right of the front steps.

I have started my herbs, and some border flowers, and the seedlings are working more or less well.  I also started tomatoes on Friday (two from Seeds of Diversity:  Delicious (which bodes well, no?), which is a big tomato, apparently like Brandywine, and Sweet 100, which was modified by a Toronto gardener and is a cherry tomato) .  Tomorrow, I’m sowing my carrots and sweet peas.  It’s nice to see stuff turning green again.

Out like a lamb

It’s been a pretty nice March!  There hasn’t been any snow for weeks.  The weather is now consistently above zero during the day (mostly single digits) with cold nights.  Can’t complain!  The month feels like it’s been busy, but I don’t have much to show for it.  Ravelry says I have four projects on the go, so it could just be that I’m spreading myself kind of thin.  Also, I spent an embarrassing amount of time watching past seasons of Scrubs in the evening.  It makes me laugh at the same time as I recognize the bad sitcomness of it.

I did finish one thing, though:  knee socks for Zebula.  I used all but about 45 cm of the sock blank.  I like how they turned out.  The sock blank was kind of blotchy (it’s the one on the right):

But the finished sock changes colours softly, and because the dye didn’t penetrate the fibre all the way in places, the effect is heathered.  I’m really pleased.  I’m looking forward to doing the other two pairs.

I had started the Sheepy All-in-one for a friend’s new baby, and run out of yarn (I think I mentioned it, but I’m too lazy to go back and see…).  I ran out of black yarn, and it’s a warm garment, so I gave up, both because the baby is growing and the weather is getting warmer, and started something new.  The Sheepy will have to go to a future winter baby (anyone pregnant out there?)  I decided to go for the Necco Wafer Hoodie from the last Twist Collective.  I’m using Elann’s Sonata yarn, which feels strangely cardboardy until you knit it.  It has a nice, glossy sheen to it, and it’s washable.  I’m very nearly done.

I also started the Whisper Cardigan, using some leftover Knit Picks Alpaca Cloud.  The whole thing will weigh less than 150 grams when it’s done.  I like the effect, but I had a hard time getting started.  Since the yarn is so thin compared to the needles, I was having a hard time with the gap being left by the loops in my circular needle (it’s done in the round).  I tried to use DPNs, but then I had four gaps instead of two.  So I finally fixed it by using Magic loop for an inch or so, and then pulling out just one big loop from my circular, effectively making it into a tiny circular needle.  This makes a gap in one stitch, but I move it around, so it is less obvious, and corrects itself better.  Then when it’s finished, I can go back and minimize the gaps from the first little bit of it.  It’s only about 10 cm along.  I don’t work on it that often, though I did do a big chunk of that during an interminable dress rehearsal for the last concert I sang in, much to my director’s dismay.  But come on!  We sat there for two and a half hours, and sang for a total of maybe 20 minutes.  To be fair, it wasn’t our show  — it was for Opera Kitchener, a fundraising concert featuring two great soloists (Richard Margison and Eve Rachel McLeod) .  Kind of an Opera’s greatest hits.  I thought I’d hate it, but I ended up enjoying it more than I expected.  The audience certainly liked it.  But I digress…

As I mentioned, the snow’s all gone.  So here’s my first picture of ‘front garden in progress’, taken last Sunday (March 22).  This year, I’ll be taking these every week, to see the progression.

I managed to rake most of the leaves off the periwinkle last weekend, to make the garden look a little greener.  I left all the leaves on the beds as mulch, though, to try to limit the number of weeds that try to take up residence since there are still about two months left before I can plant all the herbs and veggies I want to put there.  And you can’t tell from the pictures, but there are lots and lots of crocus, daffodil and tulip shoots in the beds near the front steps.

I picked up a great book yesterday, called Fresh Food from Small Spaces by R.J. Ruppenthal.  It talks about growing veggies and herbs, mostly in containers, and also touches on growing mushrooms, fermentation, sprouting (did you know that sprouts are way more nutritious than the grains, legumes and seeds they come from?  I had no idea!) and some livestock (chickens and bees).  I don’t need containers, though I will make a few for the tomatoes this year, but I do have a fairly small space to work with, so it was worth reading.  I don’t think I’ll delve into livestock of any kind.  But having a log with shiitake mushrooms in the  basement is strangely appealing…

Zebula got a real bike!  She had outgrown her last one, so we went shopping last week.  We tried a couple on, and finally settled on this one, both because there’s room for her to grow in it, and because it’s not too pink, and so can be passed on to Vorlon when he’s bigger.  Though we did pinkify it with streamers:

It has gears and handbrakes and everything!

On a totally unrelated note, the kids and I took the train to Ottawa during March Break, to visit with my parents.  Can I just say that I love the train?  I love the train!  It’s such a nice way to travel.  Beats driving or flying any day!  Anyway, during dinner at my brother’s, attended by my father, stepmom, mother, her new dude, and my brother’s family, we were discussing Middle Eastern food.  My dad was born in Egypt, and his mom cooked all kinds of interesting things after they came to Canada.  My mother was reminiscing about things like basboussa, kibbeh, kunafa (my late stepfather, was, to put it mildly, not an adventurous eater).  I lamented the difficulty in finding Lebanese pita bread here (Greek style (poofy) is ubiquitous.  Lebanese (flat, dense and chewy) is harder to find, and is often not very good.  While Greek pita is excellent for dipping, it’s not great for making sandwiches, as the pocket, if there is one, is often too flimsy to handle it.  Good for wrapping, though.) And I expressed regret at not having gotten Nonna’s recipe for those cookies she used to make for dipping in coffee that she cranked out of her food mill somehow, and the other ones she made that she rolled around in icing sugar.  Anyway, all this made me crave Middle Eastern food.  I decided to go out for lunch to Al Madina, a local Egyptian restaurant, with Dr. Thingo on Wednesday, but they were closed for renovations.  So I took out an awesome cookbook from the library, and I’m going to recreate a bunch of stuff.  I apologize in advance for the garlic that will be emanating from my pores for the next little while as I satisfy my cravings.  Pickled turnips!  Lahmajoun!  Basboussa!  Here I come!  I’m not going to make baklava, though, as my brother’s is always infinitely better.  I wish I knew what he does that I don’t.  I’ve asked, and we can’t pinpoint it.

Anyway, that’s all for now.  I will go attempt to make some order in Vorlon’s room, and start my garden today (indoors).

Mardi gras!

I’m making pancakes for dinner.  Unsurprisingly, the kids are enthusiastic.

So, where have I been?  Fighthing the endless winter, it seems.  I like winter, don’t get me wrong.  But this one’s been going on since mid-November.  Though I do have new cross-country skis that I’ve yet to try out, so I should be wishing for more snow, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

There is hope, however!

Those are forsythia boughs I brought in a couple of weeks ago, to bring in some colour.  There are a couple of cuttings from my saskatoon in there too, which will hopefully bloom later.  And this:

That’s the garden. I have plans.  Oh, yes!  Most notably, I’m going to attempt a Three Sisters thing (corn/beans/squash) and see what happens.  I don’t expect a crop from the corn, since there probably won’t be enough in there for it to self-pollinate.  Though I guess I could go in there with a q-tip and help things along.  But it should be an interesting experiment.  There are a few things I’ll start indoors in the next couple of weeks.  And I want to get some Seeds of Diversity seeds too, for tomatoes.

I was kept busy with this for the past couple of weeks.

Basically, it’s a giant granny square.  I loved the colours.  Nice to work on when everything is grey around you.  In the picture, it’s about 2/3 done – the final result was huge!  Turns out this is going to be a reissue of an old pattern.  And last time I was at Len’s Mill, I saw it on a tear-out pattern, in drab beiges and browns.  This one’s way better.

I also started one of the pairs of socks from the blanks the kids and I dyed, this one for Zebula.

I like the effect!  The dye didn’t soak all the way through the fiber in most parts, and the effect is nice and heathered.  Though, given Zebula’s fondness for all things pink, there won’t be much variation in colour until we get to the other end of the blank, where she stooped to using a little purple.  I’m doing them two-at-a-time, and I had to rip them out a little yesterday because I had grossly underestimated how enormous her feet are and had happily gone ahead and done the gusset increases about 5 cm too soon.  Of course, I discovered this during yesterday’s choir rehearsal (during the break!  I don’t knit when we’re singing, lest I face the wrath of our director) and started to rip it back.  I had a pile of curly ramenlike yarn at my feet, which I quickly stuffed into my purse because the rehearsal was starting again.  I then spent twenty minutes untangling the mess when I got home.  I’m back on track now.  I think these will be knee-highs, so I can use up most of that blank.

I started a baby item, about which I will say more later.  Its recipient was born last week, much to his mom’s relief, as he was more than a week overdue.  It’s the All-in-one (Ravelry link, sorry) from one of Debbie Bliss’s baby books.  I made this for a coworker’s baby about ten years ago, and it was fun, and ridiculously cute.  I want to hurry and finish it, because it really will start getting warm soon, and I want the baby to be able to wear it for at least a little while.

My very first meme

I’ve never done a meme before on my blog.  This one’s spreading like wildfire among my Facebook friends, and appealed to me for some reason.  Enjoy!

25 Random Things

1- My last name is Arabic, and means victory.
2- I am from a very mixed background: my father was born in Egypt of a Lebanese father and Italian mother (one of whose parents was Yugoslavian, I think); my mother is French-Canadian.
3- I have played at various points in my life in school and community ensembles: the recorder, the glockenspiel, the clarinet, the bass clarinet, the saxophone, and my voice. I never learned to play the piano and kind of wish now that I had – I am now slowly learning Bach’s invention #4, and the slow bit of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. It ain’t pretty.
4- I was a database administrator before Zoë was born. I’m not sure that I want to go back to it when I start working again.
5- I knit rather a lot. I also crochet and sew.
6- I have lived in Ottawa, Waterloo (and Conestogo), Toronto and Seattle.
7- I never really wanted to get married, but ended up doing it when I was pregnant with Zoë in the US and needed medical coverage for the delivery.
8- When in the workforce, I never wanted to be any kind of manager. I’m very content doing the grunt work and will do a good job of it. I just can’t imagine that I would be very nice to employees who aren’t pulling their weight. (see #9)
9- I am not a patient woman. Sometimes, I hate that. Often, I am surprised that more people aren’t impatient about the things that frustrate me.
10- I have never owned a car. The only time I really wish I had a car to live my day-to-day existence is when it’s raining.
11- I like winter very much. But I don’t like having to bundle up the kids to go out. But I love being out in softly falling snow. But the lack of sunlight gets to me after a while. But I love to see the world all silent and covered in white. But sometimes I need more colour that white, grey, and slushy brown. Winter is apparently a time of inner conflict.
12- I will eat pretty much anything.
13- I am a very good starter of projects. I am a much less good finisher of them.
14- I’m on the cusp between Introverted and extroverted (according to Myers-Briggs). I need time by myself, but very much like to be in the company of my friends. I’m fairly shy and unassertive in situations where I know few people, but will run off at the mouth when I’m with people with whom I’m very comfortable (and for that last one, I apologize…).
15- I love to cook, especially when I have long stretches of time to plan and execute.
16- I have only lived by myself for 12 months of my life, and really enjoyed it.
17- If I had to go to university again, I would probably pursue a program in linguistics rather than the Mathematics degree I ended up getting. I love language. But when I was in high school, I was very proficient in the sciences and never even considered the possibility of Arts and Humanities as a course of study.
18- I’m one of the few people I know who had a good time in high school.
19- We haven’t had cable TV for about 8 years, and I hardly ever listen to commercial radio, so I feel very out of touch with current popular culture.
20- My very earliest memory is of me stirring scrambled eggs on the stove while standing on a chair with my brother crawling underfoot. I couldn’t have been more than 3 and a half years old.
21- I have been to only 6 Canadian provinces. Left to visit: Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and the Territories. I’ve only spent time in three European countries: Italy, Switzerland and France. Obviously, I need to travel more.
22- I’m claustrophobic. Those scenes in movies where they lock people in car trunks for whatever reason give me the heebie-jeebies. I discovered this particular trait during my one and only time spelunking where I embarrassed myself by freaking out at having to go through a crawl space which I couldn’t see the end of.
23- I am an ok singer, and have sung solo in public (accompanied by a talented guitarist friend of mine), but prefer the safety of being in a large choir.
24- I have been with my husband for 15 years. He dated a roommate of mine in university, and I really didn’t like him at the time. Now I think he’s pretty awesome.
25- I still feel like I’m just playing at being a grown up, even though I’m 36 and have two kids and a mortgage.

With me in it

I just realized I never posted a picture of me wearing my Yosemite.  So here it is!

I wore it at two parties last Saturday.  Comfy and didn’t get all stretched and limp by the end of the evening.  My only beef is that since the yarn is so slippery, and the placket is subjected to a fair amount of stress, the buttonholes stretched over the course of the night.  So I think I’m going to sew it down, and have the buttons on there just for show.

ObscureCanLitMama took me up on my Calorimetry offer, so I whipped one up on Saturday (no photos, sorry!).  It’s a little big, though, so I’ll redo it.  Anybody else?

Knitteopath has, sadly, come down with a case of tendinitis in her wrist and can’t knit for the forseeable future.  I hope she gets better soon!  I can’t imagine what I’d do.  Probably drive my whole family crazy with my restlessness.  Anyway, she had also volunteered to do a piece for the KW Red Cross, but can’t knit it because it’s too painful, so she asked me to do it.  It was quick!  It’s a calot (French, apparently, for teeny-tiny hat):

Sorry about the lousy photo.  I looked it up online, and apparently women wore these a lot in the first half of the 20th century.  I guess to keep your head moderately warm and your bun intact?

See what happens when I apply myself?

Look!

It’s Yosemite!  And all it needs is buttons!  And the sleeves fit right!  I’ll take a picture of me wearing it after the buttons are on.  It’s a touch too long in the torso, but otherwise, it’s great!

Uh, Happy New Year

Yeah, I know, I missed all the holidays.  Summary:

Concert,snow, other concert, two more concerts, snow, Christmas, warm, no snow, New Year’s, snow, cold, snow.  And eating in between.

Actually, it was a very nice holiday season – we stayed home this year, and had a nice quiet Christmas, complete with tourtière and bûche de Noël, just the four of us.  The visitors who were supposed to come before and after Christmas couldn’t for various reasons, but we had very nice guests who came over New Year’s, and brought their children to entertain my children, and themselves to entertain me.  Ecogrrl and Clevermonkey had a great New Year’s party (my new favourite drink is a Manhattan made with one of their homemade maraschino cherries.  I made one for myself on the weekend, sans cherry, and it just wasn’t the same.  I know what I’m going to be doing with sour cherries this summer!).  Mostly we hung out, stayed in our jammies until ridiculously late in the day.

I made stuff:

That was a ‘gadget roll’, made for ecogrrl, who came back for a brief, but very nice, six week stay.  She’s back in Ghana until June.  I miss our coffee dates already.  Anyway, the roll was from a pattern in Stitch Magazine, and fabric I had on hand.  Stitch is a special issue of an Interweave quilting publication, and I really hope they decide to make it a regular magazine, because it was fantastic!

I had one Spinrite project come and go.  It was a tabard made from brown acrylic.  I didn’t know what a tabard was until that project.  Turns out it’s a formless, unflattering tunic with built-in short sleeves.  I didn’t take pictures.

I worked a little on the Yosemite, and tried another variation of the sleeves, which finally worked, but I wasn’t happy with the cast off, so it went back in the naughty corner for a couple weeks.  I finally made a sleeve I’m happy with last night.  So I have one left to do, which ought to take me another three months, even though it’s maybe 2 hours of work.

I just now finished the knickers for the Red Cross.  They sat, with about 5 cm of seam left to do for two weeks because I made the mistake of putting them down before they were totally done.  They are not pretty.  But I bet they’re warm!  And I can’t try them on, because I haven’t had a waist that small since I was a teenager.  So we have to believe they look better on (or not – they’re not meant to be seen, so who cares?).

There was also a hot water bottle cozy.  I know, I know, but my house is stupid cold at night, because I keep it at 16 degrees, and I hate sleeping with socks.  I finally got hot water bottles for the kids, since I felt vaguely guilty about having one for myself and not them.  I decided to try shadow knitting:

Neat, huh?  You get the easily customizableness of garter stitch without the endless tedium.  I have to make one more (the last hot water bottle is currently being kept cozy with an old t-shirt of Zebula’s).  The hearts didn’t turn out as well as I would have liked, but that’s what you get for designing on the fly rather than sketching things out first.  Oh, and in case you thought I was cruel for not providing a hot water bottle for Dr. Thingo, he doesn’t believe in them.  No, he believes in hogging mine, despite his repeated assurances that he doesn’t need one for himself.

Also, I made a Calorimetry for Zebula:

Way more fun than 2×2 rib deserves to be.  Now I want one for me, even though it’ll look goofy with my short hair.  And I’ll make one for any long-haired person that pipes up and says they want one – they take only a couple hours to whip up.

I started a new pair of socks, from yarn I purchased from Lofty Fibres at the last Stitch n’ Kitsch.  It makes me ridiculously happy to work with something that looks like irises at this time of year.  This is my first attempt at making two socks at the same time on one circular needle.  And though it feels like it’s taking forever, I like it.  I don’t have to remember what I did to the first sock to make it match the second.  The pattern is a something I saw on a sock online somewhere, where you alternate a round of k2, p2 ribbing with a round of just knit.  I can’t remember where I saw it.

And I have a new project for Spinrite – crochet this time.  A cardigan, worked in Bernat Supersaver, a surprisingly nice acrylic to work with.  I’d forgotten how fast crochet works up.  I made this in less than a week.

While we’re looking at it, can someone explain to me the point of short-sleeved cardigans?  Or coats, for that matter?  I see them everywhere, and I don’t get it.  On the other hand, I’m a fashion disaster, so it could just be beyond my capacity to understand.

Wasn’t this blog supposed to be about your knitting?

Why, yes!

Sorry about last week.  I’m back to normal, I think.  Though I did catch whatever Vorlon had last week and spent a very, er, purgative night last Thursday.  Zebula and Dr. Thingo got it too, and now we’re all better.  And hungry.

So what about the knitting, you ask.  How about this:

This is a capelet I made for Spinrite.  I mentioned it in the last post, I think.  The yarn was amazing!  I think I said it was an alpaca bamboo blend.  But no!  It was, in fact, an angora bamboo blend.  So soft!  It feels wonderful, but sheds like crazy.  I liked the cable pattern a lot, but the overall piece is kind of strange looking. The size was XS/S, so I couldn’t really try it on to see what it looked like.  I’m guessing the disproportionately large-looking sleeves look better hanging as they should than sprawled on the floor.  I’ll see if I can find the publicity shot for this one in a few months, because I’m curious.  Anyway, this one was fun to work up.

Cable close-up:

Speaking of angora, I only just found out what angora bunnies look like.  They’re like pillows with noses!  I can’t decide if that’s super cute, scary, cruel or just weird.  But their fur is amazing!

Also, I know I mentioned before that I went to Shall We Knit on the day after my birthday.  I really love that place.  They let me wander around petting the wool for an hour, undisturbed, which was just what I needed that day.  Plus, the owner remembered my name, even though I hadn’t come around in about a month or two.  So nice!  I came away with a drop spindle and some brown sheep hair.  I like the spindle very much – low overhead, and fairly quick results.  Plus, you can make super thin yarn without worrying about breakage – the spindle is fairly light and exerts way less force on the yarn than the tension on my spinning wheel does.  Also, the spindle spins very quickly, so I can impart a lot of twist with relatively low effort.  Way easier than trying to treadle like mad to get enough twist in the yarn.

The mini-skeins are my efforts so far.  Sorry about the picture, but the light isn’t very good (really, could we have a little sunshine, please?  It’s been forever!).  The one on the far left is my first attempt.  Very lumpy and uneven.  The middle one is the second attempt.  Much, much better, and the yarn is much finer than anything I’ve done on my wheel.  The pink one on the right was an attempt at making thick singles, which, as you can see, is harder than I expected.  I think I’ll try that on my wheel instead.  Anyone know what to do with two metres of super chunky yarn?

I haven’t forsaken my wheel.  I have, in fact, finished all the Lorna’s Laces roving (except for what I used to make the super chunky pink stuff with my spindle):

That’s about 470 metres (and about 200 grams) of handspun yarny goodness.   I’m very happy with it!  I think at that yardage, it’s more of a sport weight than the fingering weight I thought it was.  Now I have to find a good pattern for it.

Pr0n shot:

Oh, and I learned Andean Plying, which you can use to turn one singles into a two-ply.  It’s a neat technique where you wind the singles around your wrist in a certain way, join the two ends, and start plying, and the yarn magically feeds off your wrist, without cutting your hand off, garotte-style.  I used it to ply the stuff on my spindle, and I gave it a shot on the wheel as well.  I like it better than plying from two bobbins.  And it has the added advantage that you never have that problem where, when you ply from two bobbins, they’re never exactly the same length no matter how hard you try, so one bobbin is always left with a small amount of singles left on it.

Last, here’s a picture of my baby at her first piano recital.  She played Jingle Bells and did herself proud.  All the other students did a fabulous job as well!