purlsandmurmers

Bergere de France

You know, I just love getting packages in the mail.  Who doesn't?  And when the package comes with funny little customs stickers and postage in a foreign language?  All the better.

The hard part was waiting to come home, and then actually finishing all the errands in town rather than running home right away to try out my new CD's from Bergere de France.  I was as giddy as a child staring through the window at a Christmas tree laden with gifts.

When I finally did get home, and got the groceries stowed away, for it is far to hot, even with an air-conditioned house, to leave food sitting out this time of year, I lined them up on my desktop and proceeded to play.
 
Now I knew about Bergere de France knitting patterns.  I have admired a few things May knit before she started her blog, but I didn't know any place to get the patterns.  I knew that some patterns were posted on the website for free download, but I had never tried to order a book or a catalog.  It wasn't really until Abi posted about the CD-ROMs that I started seriously looking at the possibility of ordering from the website.  I found the CD's on the site and figured I would come back and order, then got busy.  When Abi posted again about the CD's and mentioned that there had been an increase in interest in the CDs, I figured that if I was going to order I should do it.  Generally, I assume that if the United States is listed in the country list, I can order from the US.  Some European websites don't even list the US, and on a few occasions it is listed but I have gotten an e-mail telling me they can't ship to the US, but hey, it's worth a try, right?   

This is wonderful, money and time well spent.  Of course my college French is a bit rusty, but I assume that with my rudimentary French, a good dictionary, Knitting Languages, Google and a bit of determination I can get through it.

Any way, there are a lot of patterns here I WANT to knit.  Don't start laughing.  I know I have said that before.

Crazy for wool.

Now what would possess a person, in the middle of a heat wave, where it is not only impossibly hot, but humid as well, to abandon the pleasures of knitting cool, sport-weight linen, and pick up wool on size 13 needles?

Tell me I am crazy.

I would whole-heartedly agree. 

The Decadent Fibers wool from last fall has come to life again, this time alternating balls in simple reverse stockinette stitch.  I am knitting a sleeveless cowl or turtle or funnel-neck.  I am not sure which yet because I am not sure about how close I will be cutting it with the yarn.  I have enough for the shell, and something leftover for the neckline, but I don't really know what yet.  I am knitting in one piece bottom up, around the shoulders and back down and am somewhere in the armhole shaping right now but have not yet gotten to the neck shaping.

That is enough.  I can return to the linen.

I think I just needed something fast and colorful, something where progress could be determined after minutes of knitting, not hours.

Deck progress (no knitting)

May was cooler than usual and I couldn't get any of the contractors to show up and work on my ongoing deck project.  So why do they pick the hottest week of the summer-so-far to all show up and work -- and why do I have to keep dragging myself out there in the hottest part of the afternoon, in the sunniest part of the yard, to look at everything and answer questions?

I am drained, I tell you just drained.

But it is looking good:

The privacy wall on the north end of the deck, protecting us from the neighbor and people coming down the driveway.  And another view of the same thing seen from across the deck:

Generally I think it looks great.  But do you notice that the colors don't match?  The deck is gray Correct Deck as specified in the contract.  The contract "deck built according to plans".  The contractor tells me they don't have to paint the wooden parts of the deck to match the gray deck material because the contract doesn't specifically say that it must be painted.  He is right, the word "paint" does not occur.  It never occurred to me that it needed to.  I thought that if you are building a gray Correct Deck deck, you would make everything match (and this contractor came very highly recommended by many people).

There is a whole lot of painting to be done here.

What does this have to do with knitting?  Nothing except that the exasperation factor is eating into my knitting time.  And I would never promise someone a gray cashmere sweater and then knit the collar and button bands out of  brown cotton while using the excuse "you said the sweater should be cashmere, you didn't say anything about the collar".

It probably isn't the same thing, but it sure looks that way to me.  It certainly has been a learning experience.

Winding

Well, I have not started the front of the linen tank yet, but tonight is knitting night and therefore I am certain that some knitting will take place.

I have however, learned something from the half of this sweater, and I am determined to avoid the endless tangles.  The light beige yarn was rewound  the first time around.  But the blue, and the second skein of taupe are sill in their initial center-pull balls.  Although I have started rewinding the blue, I don't think I will finish both before tonight's knitting group. Sitting and winding is almost as nice as sitting and knitting however, so I dont' see a problem here.

The little taupe balls are the left-over bits of the first skein: pre- post, and mid- knot, surgically disentangled.

Just in Time

Just as I my arms were beginning to ache and my fingers were beginning to rebel...
Just as my frustration level was about to outgrow the bounds of my control....
Just as I thought that double moss stitch was the cruelest form of knitting torture...
Just as I thought I would abandon knitting altogether to avoid another row....

I realized that I was almost done with the back of the linen tank.

Whew!!

Once I knew that all that was left was the little bit of shoulder shaping my resolve strengthened and I knew I could finish.

Actually once I got back into my knitting groove it went quickly. 

Now for the front.  I am filled with anticipation and dread.  The bottom will be easy, the alternating stripes, the thrill of changing yarn....but then comes the dreaded expanse of double moss stitch, endless back and forth, knitting stretching to the end of the horizon like a sea becalmed.

Well, perhaps it won't be that bad.

At least I can dream of wearing a cool linen tank.  I can dream of the next project, and I can even enjoy knitting the dreaded double moss stitch, and now that I have passed the "half-way hump" perhaps the front will go faster and I will finish before I even have a chance to realize how quickly it has gone.

This and That

When I began knitting, my mom was kind enough to give me a swift and a ball winder, and I have made great use of them over the years. They were wonderful, functional, Japanese plastic devices that worked very well.  Then, a couple of years ago the swift broke -- goodness knows how, I think a cat was involved somehow, and I needed another.  I was given this nice wooden swift and the lovely wooden ball winder shown next to it.

These are beautiful devices.  However they have one problem.  The swift does not fit on my sewing table or any of the counters in the house.  You see, the part that is supposed to clamp to the table top is about 1/4 inch to short to fit around my counter edges or table top edges.  The old swift was made with a clamp much like the ones shown on the ball winder and it could fit anywhere, but the new swift has this lovely wooden clamp that is just a smidge to small, and it fits nowhere except on the room divider between the entry hall and the dining room.

I set it up some weeks ago to wind the linen, and as I intended to wind more yarn, I never took it down.  Now I am wondering if it can just become a permanent or at least moderately permanent part of our decor -- I might be convinced to take it down for parties for example if I could just leave it up for every day.   I would be more than willing to compromise -- for example I could stop complaining about the pile of sunglasses and other things that are stored on the kitchen counter near the coffee pot -- in exchange for permanent swift mounting.

So far most visitors to the house have no idea what it is anyway and this leads to some interesting conversations.  People come up with the most outlandish ideas.

The two missing blue yarns arrived for the Anny Blatt sweater.  Now I just need to finish something so I can move on to this project.  Something else arrived in that box as well.  You would be completely naive if you think I can call a yarn store and only request two missing skeins of yarn without ordering something else -- it would hardly be worth the postage after all.  But you will just have to wait to see what that something might be.  I WILL get to it this summer, even if some other project gets bumped further down the list.  Life is a constantly rejiggering of lists after all.

And I am knitting on the linen tanks.  I am about 5 1/2 inches above the armhole shaping and making good progress.  After a period of just not wanting to pick up the needles I have returned to a more productive frame of mind and I just can't wait to sit and knit in the evening.  May this bit of knitting fever continue.

Untangled

The linen tank progresses and I have begun the armhole shaping. 

But actually what seems to be the greatest progress on this project so far is the rewinding of the current skein of yarn from center-pull tangle to hand-wound ball. 

Is this common for linen yarn?  I can't keep the yarn tangle free.  The balls, at least the center pull balls that I wound, keep falling apart and the yarn is just stiff enough that it grabs ahold of itself and creates wondrous rat's nests of yarn.  Some evenings it seems like more time spent untangling than actually knitting.

Last night I broke down and rewound this skein into a ball. 

I shall have to see what happens with the rest of the yarn.  The blue and light taupe can be managed, they are only used for short bits.  I have one of them in a "yarn bra" and although that keeps the outside strands of yarn from falling down and tangling, it does not seem to offer any relief to the masses of knotted yarn that pull out of the center of the skein.

Perhaps I should just rewind the second skein of taupe into a nice round ball before I begin the front of the sweater.