purlsandmurmers

Knitting Update

I'm back!

I never went anywhere, I was just suffering from a major slowdown in motivation.  You haven't missed much; pretty much every project I mentioned before is exactly where I left it.

The Blue Sky Cropped Turtleneck is patiently waiting for me to pick it up and knit the ribbed bottom.

Mine is waiting to be blocked.  I did order the beads however, and they are also waiting for Mine to be blocked.

I started, and finished knitting, the Green Filatura di Crosa boatneck pullover.  But it sat around for two or three weeks while I went on a major elimination round, tackling a bunch of unfinished projects around the house.  It has been on the blocking board since Thursday, and it finally dried yesterday; before that the air was too damp and it was too cool for the air-conditioning to come on and suck that moisture out of the air.

I don't think I will get to it today.  I am working on sorting through years of accumulated clothing in my closets, and I will not finish today but I have made a big start.  And I really want to think not just about what I want to knit, but what I will wear, and what I need to go with other things in the closet.

Knitting has also been slow because we have a kitten in the house, Moisés. He is about 3 months old and doesn't really bother the knitting if I am not working on it; there are far to many other attractive things to get into, as well as two other cats to terrorize, but if I am sitting down and actually attempting to knit he wants to be right there in the middle of it all, as if he assumes that there is nothing I would be doing that is not meant to be for him.

I have managed to train 5 previous cats to leave the knitting alone and to come to terms with the idea that they can sit in my lap and not play with the knitting, or they can go elsewhere.  I am confident that Moisés too will learn in time.

I finished the back of this summer top, from  Gedifra Highlights 091, this morning during the telecast of the men's finals at Wimbledon.  It is a fast and easy project, although it has taken me two weeks, mostly due to interference as discussed above.  

Here is a picture of the sweater from the book.  I am using the same yarn, in a different color obviously, and am really enjoying knitting it.  It feels like it will be light and cool and lovely to wear.  

I am not sure at this point if I will have anything to wear with it, although that was not my intention.  The closet clean-out process has been brutal.  All of the projects listed above look safe; I believe I have things to go with each of them, but quite a few things have been tossed and the carnage goes on.  

It looks like I will be very busy finishing up UFO's and filling in gaps when the whole process is finished.

Anny Blatt Book Arrived

The new Anny Blatt book arrived. 

I am not knitting the lovely sweater, which is called Valadon, in the color shown which is a light silvery gray/light gray mix.  I am using this shade of Angora Super, which is called Celeste, and a lighter blue for the Victoria.   IRL the celeste is similar to the color shown here, but perhaps just a tad more blue. The Victoria is back-ordered but should be in before I am ready to start the sweater.

It will not be a fast project, the jacquard-like bodice is knit at 30 stitches to 10 cm.

I feel doubly lucky because Valadon is not the only sweater I am interested in knitting in this book.

There are at least two other sweaters that I find very compelling, including this one, called Kennedy with fabulous cables and i-cord lacing in Merinos and Victoria.

It seems that I every time I decide I dislike some knitting technique, I immediately fall in love with sweater after sweater that employs that technique.  I learned to love ribbing by knitting ribbed sweater after ribbed sweater.  I see that I shall learn to love i-cord as well.

On other fronts I am knitting but have made no progress on blocking or sewing together.  I collapse in my chair in a state of happy exhaustion each night and am thrilled to manage a little stockinette.

Which reminds me, I need to go count rows.

A misplaced X

The Eleanor Roosevelt knit-in was loads of fun and really a nice way to spend a wet dreary Sunday afternoon.

As seems to have been the rule last week, I came unprepared and frazzled.  I had my yarn, and I had the block I had knitted previously, but I forgot my camera and forgot several other things.  I also paid no mind to what I might be knitting once I arrived.

Namely I just never thought about the idea that a block could be something other than plain stockinette.  Of course once I was actually there and started looking at what everyone else was knitting it occurred to me that it might have been nice to think about doing something interesting with my block before I actually started.

Instead I just winged it.  I thought I would put a cabled X in the middle of a simple stockinette swatch with garter stitch borders.  A pretty simple idea really.  I think I should be able to come up with something more interesting on the spur of the moment, but the simple truth was that I couldn't.

For the most part, it worked well although  I didn't quite finish the patch.  I could have stayed later.  A few women were hanging in to finish and I only had about an inch of garter stitch to go.  But by that time I realized that I had missed in my off the cuff attempt placing the cable motif at the center of the block; it was about an inch too low.  I decided to rip and restart, saving the block for next year.

This is apparently going to be an annual event.  One intrepid knitter brought in 127 blocks.  I have no intention of competing with her, but I think that I can manage a few blocks for next year.  It would be fun on occasion, when I want to play with a pattern, or for those days when I want to knit something (anything) and don't have a project at the appropriate stage.  Blocks are also small and portable and a good way to use up some of the yarn left over from knitting hats and scarves for the children at the city schools.

I Must Knit This

I was toodling along various pathways on the web yesterday and I came across this sweater:

I was obsessed.  I must knit this.

The spring Anny Blatt and Bouton d'Or books came a couple of months ago and nothing really caught my fancy; not that the designs were bad, there was just nothing begging to be knit.

This sweater is in Anny Blatt Horst 13, the Horst series are not included in my "subscription" to Anny Blatt books and I often forget to look for them.

When I found this,  on Yarn Market's new Knitch Magazine I was obsessed with finding out what it was and where I could get it.

The book and the yarn are on their way to me even though I won't be knitting this until cool weather beckons again.

It struck me, as I clicked "buy" on my computer that until Thursday I hadn't bought any yarn since February; and now here I am on a mini buying spree of sorts.

Otherwise, nothing much has been happening.  Nothing has been finished although the "to be blocked" and "to be completed" piles are growing.

Oh I take that back.  I finished a block for to take with me tomorrow for the Eleanor Roosevelt Knit-In down at the Roosevelt Historic Site.  We are knitting blocks for Warm Up America, and I have one to knit while I am there.

Progress and Doubts

Oh my, the back of Mine has been completed for a week and I have forgotten to post.  I am about 1/4 of the way up the front, perhaps 1/3, but I haven't really checked.   I was really happy with the project and the way the knitted fabric was working up -- I really love the fabric produced by this Rowan Bamboo Tape.  It really is too bad it was discontinued.  I should have bought more.  I love the way that my other sweater in this yarn, Granite, wears

But back to Mine.  As I was saying, I was really happy with it until I laid it out o the cutting table to take a picture.  Now I am having doubts.

Looking at it spread out flat it looks too short and too wide, not that I didn't know that this was the basic shape, but that my thinking may have been clouded by my dreams of how I wanted it to look.  

But it may work.  I have been skeptical before and been proven wrong.  I shall finish knitting the front and then see how it turn out.

I haven't ordered the beads for the neckline yet, and I do want the beads along the neckline.  I am wondering if I should bother -- perhaps I won't like the finished sweater.  I can order them after I put it together.  But then again, if I sew it up and like it I will want to wear it immediately.  I have the perfect pants and top just waiting in the wings and it will be terribly frustrating to wait for the beads.

I suppose I shall order them anyway; surely I will find some other use for them.

 

Not much other progress.  I haven't even looked at the pile of UFOs yet, despite my promises to sort them as soon as I got back from Knoxville.

The new Vogue Knitting arrived today and I have only looked at it very briefly; I am not yet sure what I think, my initial impressions are somewhat cautious.   I will update you on that shortly.  

The yarn swift needs some surgery as well.  I had planned to get to that today but after steaming a sweater back into shape to wear tomorrow, I decided that I was much more inclined to paint my nails.  So I read about the frivolous thoughts of the 14 year old Katherine Howard (fictionalized of course) while I pursued my own frivolities and admired my fingernails.

Knitting tonight.   More later. 

Home Again, Home Again

It was a lovely trip, we had a great time and it is wonderful to be back home.

The weather in Tennessee was dreadful, it rained the entire time we were there and I was so glad that I took my warm winter raincoat even though I had thought I would only need it on the trip back to New York (when I did not need it at all).  But seeing our grandson was wonderful and that was really enough.

When we got home this afternoon, we had snowdrops by the front door to greet us.  I was very happy to see them.  They are really the only sign of spring except for the smell of wet earth and the increasing warmth of the sun.  At least the mountain of snow on the side of the driveway was finally almost all melted. 

When we were in Knoxville we saw Bradford Pears in bloom everywhere; apparently they are quite popular because they are the first tree to bloom, followed by the redbud.  They reminded me that I was thinking of planting a couple of witch hazels to add a little early color to the garden just when I need it most.  I should really start thinking about where I should place them as I will undoubtedly have to dig up a substantial amount of rock and clay and prepare the soil before they can be planted.

Although I took two projects with me, very little knitting was actually accomplished.  I suspected this would be the case, but I am always hopeful where my knitting is concerned and there is nothing worse than running out of knitting projects (it has happened, so I know).  

I started with Mine because I already had the needles out.  A good part of what you see here was knit on the trip south as I did about half of the driving, which left me around about 6 or 7 hours of knitting time, plus a little bit of knitting time in the evenings.  Truthfully though, very little was accomplished in the evenings.  We would chat, I would read a little, and then fall soundly and deeply asleep.  I did all but about 40 minutes of the driving home so again the knitting languished except for four rows that were knit during that brief 40 minute "knit and nap" period before I resumed driving.

On the way home we stopped at our local Fed Ex depot in Newburgh, where a package was waiting:  several new (to me) Japanese knitting books.  I have been looking through them this evening, between unpacking, laundry, and kitty cuddling.

I do think the nicest thing about coming home was having Tori and Sam greet me at the door and follow me around the house.  They would sit with both of us on the sofa, but they know that I am the human most likely to stop whatever I am doing and indulge in kitty cuddling on demand, so they have been my faithful companions.  I had almost forgotten how much I had missed having feline companionship, and I was also surprised at how much I missed them when we were away.

And we're off....

I finished the neckline on the Blue Sky Cropped Turtleneck, and heaved a big sigh of relief.  It looks like I will have enough yarn left to do an acceptable amount of ribbing at the bottom of the sweater.  There is a little over a skein and a half and the neckline took a smidge over a skein but less than a skein and a quarter.  The bottoms is 25 % wider than the neckline, but does not need to be nearly as deep.  I think I will have an acceptable amount of ribbing at the bottom.  I will seam the sweater with a different yarn though just to conserve what yardage I do have.

This is a good point at which to leave the sweater.  I have enough done that I am confident about being able to finish and it will not take long.  A preliminary try-on looks good as well.

Next up travel knitting.  

I may not be posting on the trip.  I gave up my mobile broadband service when I no longer needed to stay in touch with an office while I was away.  Besides, this is our first trip in 10 months.  DSD may have a wireless network at her house, in which case I may be able to connect.  But I already know that at the end of a day with my darling two year old grandson there is not  a lot of energy left.

See you again in mid March.

Travel Projects

Tuesday morning we leave for Knoxville.

I decided not to take the blue sky alpaca pullover on the trip, mostly because it is at a stage where it is large and cumbersome and because I had hoped to finish it first, but that is not likely to happen.  Even so, I am thinking spring knitting for this trip and alpaca thing will not take that long to finish when I do get home.

Saturday was packing day.  I am one of those weird people who, in ideal circumstances, likes to have everything packed and ready to go well in advance.  I don't forget things that way, and I am not running around like a maniac tearing the house apart.  I really do not like returning to a house that looks like a cyclone-ravaged disaster area, which is the likely result if I put things off until the last minute.  I also planned to pick my knitting projects and knit swatches, but I actually didn't finish the swatches for the second project until today.

I am taking two projects with me.  This may be too much, especially considering that the last couple of trips I have not gotten much knitting while I was in Knoxville, and I did most of the driving.  I am hoping that G and I will share the driving this trip and that will, of course, add to my knitting time.

The first project on my list is the boatneck pullover with ruffle from the new Spring/Summer 2009 Filatura di Crosa book.

I will be knitting it of Brilla in this lovely deep green color:

It seems that my gauge is getting tighter or perhaps just more consistent because I automatically cast on with smaller needles for the swatch, which is usual for me, only to have the swatch turn out too small.    The pattern calls for 7 skeins and I have 8.  I hope that is enough to lengthen the sweater by about 2 inches.  The instructions say the longest size is 23" but that the sweater is about 2 inches shorter when worn because of the width-wise stretch.  

I am also taking along some Rowan Bamboo Tape in a lovely gray color in order to knit Mine from last summer's Rowan book (#43).

I could have sworn I had a photo of the yarn as well, but can't locate it now.  It is dark gray, similar to the color in the photo; it might even be the same color.

This swatch was easier since I knit Granite last fall with the same yarn at the same gauge.  I did make a new swatch just to be sure.  

I sat and made the swatch this morning while I was reformatting my old Ipod and downloading some audiobooks onto it since G has decided he wants to try listening to books on tape and learn to use the Ipod so he can listen to music while he walks   It was a rather pleasant way to sit and do that kind of otherwise boring task. And it looks like our "computer" classes will be expanded to cover computer, Ipod, and Kindle, as he is also having trouble seeing the typeface on most books and finds the large print on the kindle much easier to use, even though he doesn't like holding the device as much as reading from a regular book with pages.

I don't really intend to start either of these projects until we are actually on the road.  Any knitting tonight or tomorrow will be on the bulky alpaca.   When I return I will have these projects to finish up and it will also be time to finally face the UFO corner.

Spring Twist Collective

The Spring issue of  Twist Collective is up!

There are some interesting articles, one on painting lace and another on knitting with wire.  

Of course there are patterns as well.  As usual there are beautiful sock patterns, and I sit here at my computer screen and admire them.  But the truth is that I admire socks in the abstract more than in the reality of actually wearing them.  They are small and portable, but I have not yet become a confirmed sock-wearer, or at least only occasionally.  I am most likely to wear my socks walking around the house instead of going barefoot and they wear out quickly.  Now it may be worth the indulgence, a kind of personal luxury, but I haven't yet reached that stage. Instead I shall just admire all the work of the confirmed sock-knitters.  

There are also a couple of really cute baby blankets as well and I love both of them.  I don't need them now but surely there will be some call for baby blankets someday.  They also look like they would be fun to knit.  I can never get through the mindless expanse of plain baby blankets.

But of course, what really captures my attention are the sweaters.  There are two sweaters this month that are calling my name.

The Ardent Jacket has a nice combination of lace and stockinette and a shape and style that I would probably wear.  I am not particularly taken with the shawl collar; it is lovely but it is a little too delicate to my eye.  I don't think it is a design flaw, just my own penchant for stronger details and a little bit of drama.

But then, that is one of the reasons I like to knit my own.

The other sweater that has really caught my eye is Primrose Path by Angela Hahn.  It is really my favorite thing in this issue.   This just looks like a lovely comfortable casual summer sweater, one that would be fun to wear and to knit.  There are more pictures on Angela's blog.

The pattern of the lace comes up better on the blog, I think.  It was from Angela's post on her blog that I learned that the new issue of Twist Collective had arrived.

Now I think I am finally getting ready for spring knitting, which is good because I want to take something for spring with me on my trip next week.  But first I need swatches, and I know it won't be for either of these patterns, but they will be waiting for me when I get home.

To Bobble or not to Bobble

 

As you see, I am making great progress on the Blue Sky Alpaca Cropped Turtleneck.  I finished the body and am just ready to start the second sleeve.  I am really enjoying the process of knitting this, even the bobbles.  Well, I always enjoy knitting bobbles.

If you look at the top of the photo, you will see a section of the body without bobbles.  This started off as an accident of sorts.  Since I am knitting the sweater side to side, I was also knitting the body simultaneously.  I noticed that I had left the bobbles off on side at one of the repeats and was all ready to rip back and fix the problem when I started thinking -- and you know that can be a problem.

I realized that although I love bobbles, and I like the way they look on the sweater, I would probably not appreciate bobbles at the base of my neck in back.  Since I am lacking the normal lordotic curvature at the top of the spine, I often have trouble with things that seem to press on my neck, especially when I am sitting in cars, where head rests are all designed to provide support for the normal spinal curvature.  The bobbles would drive me crazy.

 

Since it just happened that I was approaching the center of the sweater, I decided to leave them off for 3 repeats.  I wonder now if I should have left them off for the entire back of the body, but think this isn't bad and at least it is balanced.   

This is going well.  I hope to finish it before we leave for Knoxville next Tuesday, but there are a lot of other things I wish to do before we leave for Knoxville as well, including work on some swatches for my traveling project(s).  If it is not done, I don't know if I will take it with me or not, as I don't think I will be wearing it on the trip and will have no place to block it anyway.  I have five days to make a decision.  A lot can happen in five days; or, as seems to be the case more often in my life, not enough can happen.