Camera Fail
Once upon a time, at a sheep festival far, far away, I broke my camera. Specifically I broke the screen, so I could still take pictures with it, I just couldn’t see what I was photographing. This led to a lot of kinnearing and a lot of funny looking shots, until yesterday. Yesterday, when I attempted to replace the screen myself, and now… well, now I can’t do anything with my camera.
Apparently when they say “don’t try this at home” they really mean it.
So tomorrow I get to take the thing over to the local camera shop and beg for their mercy; in the meantime the only thing I can possibly show you is a picture of the sample knit I’m working on, the gorgeous Ivy Wrap in some ultra tasty Buffalo Gold Lux.
Imagine it at twice the length, now—the combination of pattern and yarn is so lovely that I’m just whipping through this. I should have it done before the middle of the week.
I was hoping to have Caturday for you, especially since we have three new teeny tiny foster cats, but see above re: camera, so you’ll just have to trust me that they look like this:
So close, and yet…
I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather for the past couple of days, but I’m determined to make it through this week and enjoy myself this weekend, no matter what it takes. Almost everything that absolutely must be done for Rhinebeck is completed. Now all that’s left is packing, sewing on Viv’s clasps (which still haven’t arrived), and a few small pet projects that I’d like to get done but aren’t vital. So if I need to, I can sleep for the next few days to try and shake this bug.
The pomatomi continue onward…
I’d actually love to be knitting these faster, but if I get them done before I leave (or—heaven forfend—while I’m there) I’ll be without a mindless knitting project, so I’m trying to stretch them a little longer.
I also spun up the second ply of that merino/silk that I’d like to finish this week, on the same bobbin as the first ply because I was too lazy to wind off. I just spun a bit of contrasting color scrap fiber in between the two and kept going. Of course, now I have to wind off both plies to have room for the third one, but still.
I also had to move the wheel downstairs, where I could put it behind a closed door, because of this little problem:
Oh, cats.
Creation
On the seventh day, Jesh finished a sweater.
It’s currently blocking and I’m still considering what to do about a closure, but it certainly went faster than anticipated. So… now what do I do for the next two weeks? (Just kidding. I still have a million things left to do before Rhinebeck and two weeks is still nowhere near enough time.)
Now I need to go ice my wrists and cuddle some poor, neglected kittens.
Kitri
I cannot fathom ever being able to wear these socks; I suspect they’ll live out their lives in a nice tshadowbox, where they will be safe from the cruel world of shoes and sweat and dirt and carpets and cats1 that might chew on them at every opportunity. These socks are too pretty for that fate.
The pattern was a surprisingly straightforward knit! Not that you’d know by A) looking at it or B) how long it took me to do. But, really, thanks to the chatty instructions (which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows the designer) and easily memorized stitch patterns, I could’ve easily knit these within a week if I hadn’t had other interruptions and delays. There is one minor mistake in the pattern: row 9 of the three-quarter fan stitch should be worked per the written instructions, rather than the charted ones, and row 10 should have six stitches on each side of the fan, rather than five and seven. I believe all future kits will include this fix, though.
Pattern: Kitri by Lisa Grossman AKA the Tsock Tsarina
Yarn:Jennifer’s FlockSock by Holiday Yarns in Crimson Rioja
Needles: US0/2mm and US1.5/2.5mm
Mods: I changed a bunch of tiny things, some of which I would probably change again and some of which were stupid mistakes that I had to make more changes to fix. Change #1 was to knit only five fan repeats on the leg, because I don’t like my socks to be too long and I shorten most sock patterns just out of habit. But my doing this caused the ribbing to hit at a point where it was a little too loose, so the leg wasn’t staying on a snug as I like, so I had to rip out the ribbing and re-do it on US0 needles.
My second change was to switch the toe from a wedge toe (decreases every other round ’til the end) to a round toe (decreases every other round ’til half the stitches are gone, then decreases every round ’til the end.) So, I knit the patterned toe as instructed until round 12, at which point I decreased every round on the sole, and skipped rows 13, 14, 17, and 18 from the toe chart.
My last little modification was to replace the last row of the lace overlay with the grafting row, for a more seamless look. I worked the beaded picot as usual, but then slid the stitch back to the left needle, broke the yarn, and grafted, making sure to graft the beaded stitch purlwise.
On Ravelry here.
1: one of the cats in question—
Silly little thing is all over the place.
Gearing up
Rhinebeck is just four weeks away, which is exciting and terrifying all at once. I have a million things to get done before then… hopefully I can get through ‘em all.
First priority is spindles, of course; as such, the store is slowly being stocked with some pre-show inventory, so all the folks who aren’t going can have a crack at the pretties. Of course if you see something you like and you will be there, I’d be happy to waive the shipping fees and bring it to you! I’m totally in love with the new rhinestone embedded square whorls that I just recently got in:
And there will of course be the usual assortment of polymer clay, stoneware, glass, and gemstones on offer.
I also promised myself I would finish my Kitri socks before then.
I’m pretty sure I can make it, unless something goes catastrophically wrong, like, say, misplacing the beads for the cuff. Um, wait a second. Where did I put the rest of the beads for the cuff? Uh-oh.
And I know it’s a day late, but we’ve got some new foster kittens, including the cutest little basement cat ever. I think I’m in love.
Fall Cleaning
You all remember my wheel, right? Dark, pretty thing that I’m in love with?
I gave her a bit of a makeover.
Turns out all that lovely but splotchy color was the result of 150 years’ worth of dirt getting caught in the shellac. Say it with me now: eeeeew. So, armed with no more than some denatured alcohol and a toothbrush, and guided by the wise words of the women in the antique wheel and CPW groups on Ravelry, I took the thing outside and scrubbed. And scrubbed. And then… I scrubbed. Have I mentioned the scrubbing? I finally de-crudded the flyer:
And cleaning the drive wheel brought out a gorgeous grain—not enough to narrow down what type of wood this is, but hopefully I’ll be able to find out eventually.
Kitty Carlisle even got in on the cleaning action.
Now I’ve just got to refinish her with some tung oil, and she’ll be ready to travel with me down to Garden State Sheep and Wool next week.
Wheelspun
Every time I finish a skein of yarn I tell myself that I’m going to be more productive and spin more often and have more skeins to show for my efforts. And yet it never happens. I think at this point I just need to be satisfied with the fact that I can spin pretty, fairly even yarns… when I actually get around to it.
This one didn’t turn out precisely as I intended; I was hoping for the stripes to line up a little better and be more distinct. As it is, the striping should be rather Trekking-esque, tweedy and marled and shifting. It’s also fairly evident that this was my first yarn off of this wheel, but spinning it definitely helped me settle into the groove of spinning on an antique, figuring out the tricks and quirks of making it run smoothly. And, I totally crammed all four ounces of plied yarn onto that bobbin. So I win.
Three-ply merino sock yarn, 22wpi, 500yds in 4oz.
Oolong’s too busy chasing bugs around the house to notice that I have string.
Stalled
Poor Laura/cosmicpluto—I’m afraid every other day I’m emailing her nitpicking on some problem or other in her pattern. Unfortunately the current problem at the moment has me stalled on the knitting until she recalculates some things, so I won’t meet the deadline of finishing before my friend (who is also knitter, although I met her elsewhere) flies in on Wednesday. Still, given how awesome the sweater looks so far, I suspect it will be well worth the wait. Look at this neat underarm/sleeve shaping!
In the meantime, I did consider some button choices:
I think the silver ones are too shiny/flashy against the almost antiqued look of the fabric. The bronze ones are great and would be perfect, but I didn’t buy them since I don’t know how many I’ll need or what size.
Also, remember that sock I was working on, like, forever ago?
I fixed it! Now maybe I can finish this pair off and feel a little less guilty about all of my languishing UFOs.
The cats, shockingly, are unimpressed.
Sorry
Kittengirl can’t come to the blog right now. She’s got a wheel to play wif and a design to work on. If you leave a message I will chew on it deliver it to her.
Sleeve Island
There comes a time, in every sweater’s life, where one must… knit the sleeves.
Well, okay, that’s not entirely true. I suppose if you’re knitting a vest there is no sleeve knitting. And if you’re knitting a top down cap sleeved raglan you could probably just cast off the sleeve stitches once you reach that point and not actually knit sleeves. But with most sweaters, there are sleeves, and epic, endless sleeves at that. Even these little half sleeves feel like they’re dragging on and on and on and on and… you get the point.
I think some of it’s psychological; you knit up the whole sweater body and you think to yourself, well! Now that I’m through with that I’ve just got to do the sleeves and the finishing and I’m done! Fast and easy! Except sleeves usually make up about a third of the sweater, which means that however long you spent knitting the entire back, or lower half if you’re working in the round, is probably how long it’s going to take to knit the sleeves.
Of course knowing this doesn’t make it any easier to knit the damn things, does it. I’ve really got to teach Oolong to knit for me.
(Does the word ’sleeve’ look funny to anyone else?)
