Well, would you look at that?

I finally knit something with my handspun:

5 ounces of ‘Cricket’, the May 2007 entry in the Hello Yarn Fibre Club. Very nice little scarf and I love the colours. Best part? It only took me two days to knit up.

Now I’m going to go and lay on the couch. I had the second part of my root canal today and I think my entire head may be frozen. Bye bye.

That’s what I’m talking about!

An August FO is done.  Okay, yes you’re right, it is October, but it is still done. 

Super dog action shot:

This is the obligatory blinded by the sun shot:

I’m pretty happy with it too.  It’s very comfortable, the fit is great, the colour is good, and I’m even pretty happy with how my set in sleeves look.  About the fit, that whole “make it to match your actual size, not the size you think are”, brilliant.  I did this in the 44″ size and it fits so right it’s the porridge that Goldilocks ate.  That’s bigger than the sizes given in the book, you can go here and email for the extended sizing for the pattern.  You need the original pattern as well, of course.

As an additional bonus, this is in a bunch of crosswalks downtown:

How brilliant is that?  My mom actually taught me to look before I entered a roadway but apparently not everyone’s mom was quite so kind!  Makes me giggle every single morning.

Oh, one last thing, you must go view this cartoon if you have cats.  Brilliant.  Shamelessly stolen from Sarah Hope at whatifknits.  Make sure you turn up the volume, the sound is half the joy.

Have a great night everyone.

So hey, how’s Poppy doing?

Hmmmmm?  Pardon?  Oh, what’s that, over there?

See that?  I totally distracted you with nothing but a bit of string.  The fact that I knew that would work only because it would have totally worked on me is irrelevant.  It is pretty string though, is it not?  That’s Alfebetto from Artfibers.  I believe it’s colour #5.  It is lovely and after fighting the good fight and getting my sleeves safely installed in Poppy I thought I deserved a treat and did a little stash diving.  I’m doing the Montego Bay Scarf from IK, Summer 07.  Very mindless and that is making me happy after the sleeve work.

Just to clarify, the sleeves are in, I’ve learned a tonne of lessons, not least of which is to do short row shoulders (if I ever do another sew it together sweater in my life!), Diane Soucy and Stephanie Japel are my bff’s though.  I’m a sucker for top down sweaters, and now I know why.  Sewing is hard.  I will take some picis of Poppy soon though.  I just have a few more ends to weave in then finish around the neckline and the bottom and she is fini.

I also got some of these in the mail yesterday:

They are super shiny, wicked pointy, and take a bit of getting used to.  Not near as much drag as other wood needles but still more than say and Addi Turbo.  I want to used them some more before I say anything else.  I also got a couple of the fixed Harmony needles in 3.0 mm to try and see if I can get some Kauni gauge.  I’ve been stalking this site for days trying to decide what pattern I want to do my Kauni in.  Scroll down, click on the left hand side you’ll see 4 links to Norwegian Fair Isle.  Some of the charts would be stunning with the Kauni.

Finally, I had noticed that when I get off the train in the mornings there are quite often vendors/company reps giving away free samples of things.  Newspapers, granola bars, etc.  When the new season of Survivor was about to start they were giving out little foil wrapped fortune cookies with the show & tv station logos on them.  Hubby really liked that!  Snort.  This morning, it was a newspaper and a yogurt.

I wish they were there everyday!  I’d never have to pack my breakfast again.  I always eat when I get to work, I just cannot face food at 6:00 in the morning.

As a definite bonus for a Tuesday, the sun came out and the temperature went up to almost 19 Celsius.  Can you imagine?  It was like a summer morning.  So cool, er warm, er, nevermind, you understand.  Here is a pici of the sun coming up from the top floor of my building.  It was amazing to watch.

Then I went and ate my free yogurt. 

In the light of day

Thank you Lizz! You’re exactly right about using short rows instead of stair steps for binding off shoulders. I found this article  by Jenna Wilson at Knitty about it if anyone else is interested. Way smarter and that is what I will be doing next time. Unfortunately, this time, the Patons SWS had felted just a little bit and refused to be frogged so I had to persevere and just find a way of doing it.

I was over-thinking the situation too much as well. Once I realized that if I just chose the colour from one side and seamed in that it would just look like and extension of that side. Duh, you don’t have to use a third colour for the seam, thank you forest for the trees, you’re right, that is incredibly obvious! LOL. I also realized that I was trying to seam too close to the edge and that I should move one row further into the knitting to make it easier and cleaner to deal with the steps. All in all, the shoulders look pretty good now. SWS is not a good thing to seam with though. For the armholes I’m going to use the yarn that Iused in the body. Much stronger and it will be an invisible seam so the colour difference shouldn’t matter.

In pasta news:

 

Nice, right? Yeah, you’ll notice that there are no picis of the cooked product. That’s cause we were too busy inhaling them. They were so good. I think I want to try making homemade lasagna next. Drooling on my chin, just a little bit.

I love me some gadgets

Hubby stopped yesterday and picked up a pasta roller attachment for the Kitchen Aid.  Sweet!  Tonight, chicken mushroom and three cheese ravioli.

Hey mom, you know what this means?  We never have to roll pedahe (perogi) dough.  Yay!  Throw away your rolling pin. 

In knitting news I’m trying desperately to seam up my Poppy but I am not having any success.  I suck at sewing.  I’ve looked up in every book I own and a gazillion websites and it still looks poopy.  The main problems I’m having?  The ‘steps’ in the shoulders are really not fun for seaming and because of the striping of the SWS I’m concerned it will look stupid once seamed.  Top of front & back are each one colour then that single line of the seam is a third colour.  I know, I know, I’m thinking about it too much.  Colour me shocked. 

Okay, gotta help hubby stuff & seal raviolis.  Yummers.

Pressing flowers

And by that I mean that Poppy is finally on the blocking board.  Huzzah!  Now I just have to buy some wine to bolster my courage so that I can start setting in those sleeves.

I also finished My So-Called scarf.  Manos in colourway Melilla.  Amazingly soft and I love her.  Quite long too, like about 9 feet.  I did it over 36 stitches and on 6.5 mm needles so I got a bit tighter weave.  I’m wearing her to work tomorrow.  She’ll look great with my black coat on a grey morning. 

I’m toodling along on my Mr. Greenjeans too.  About 1/2 done the first sleeve.  Forgot to take picis though.  Silly me.  Not much else going on around here.  What are y’all doing?

Even with plague, progress is being made

A wicked cold is running amok through our household. Damn unwashed masses on the transit system. I’m not touching any surfaces next week when I’m on the train. I don’t care if I fall down. I’m not getting anymore cooties. I’ve been sick since Wednesday and hubby started yesterday and Vanessa today. I think we’ll all just pass it around to each other for the next week.

Finally got to the fabric store today. Took the completed Larger than Life bag with me to select the colours for the lining. I was thinking I would be all tasteful and muted. Then I realized that I was lining a Granny Square bag and that might just be a little bit 1967. So I got these:

I’m going to do a double thick inner bag, each with a different pattern. Kind of screams at you doesn’t it? Excellent, that’s what I was going for.

Here’s a pici of my transit knitting project. My So-Called Scarf in Manos. Colour is called Melilla, scroll waaaaayyyyyy down. There isn’t a colour number on the website. I love this stuff. Amazing soft. I’m also working on the Monkey socks this afternoon.

Oh! And I almost forgot. I had my first spinning lesson last Wednesday at Birkeland Bros. It was wonderful. I really liked it. I played on a Ashland Joy wheel. So nice. Next week I want to try the Louet because I’m thinking that’s the wheel I want to start out on. Not too expensive, simple, and most importantly Stella can’t get her head caught in the spokes. Here’s a pici of the wee ball of yarn I created. How cute is that? It’s about the size of an orange.

It’s 100% wool by Shades of Narnia. I couldn’t find a website, if you google you can find an email address.

Recap

Whew, that was a quick week.  The new job is great so far, the commute not so bad.  We’ll see what happens with that on Tuesday though when all the students go back to school and the volume of humans jumps up exponentially.

On the August UFO front, I sort of didn’t do fabulous but I did get some stuff done.

First up, Larger Than Life Bag.  Crochet & assembly is complete I just need to find her a nice fabric and make the lining.  I might hit the fabric store this weekend, we’ll see.  I was going to use drapery ties for handles but that would be too shiny and posh so I’m going to hit the thrift store and find and old leather purse or bag that I can cannibalize for the handles.  If that doesn’t work I’ll see if I can find two old narrow leather belts, or one wide one and make it into two.  I want it to be hippie dippy and I think old leather will be just the ticket.

I really like the striped gusset too.  Makes me happy.

Poppy didn’t quite get finished but pretty darn close.  I finished the second sleeve and really liked it so I ripped back the bad one and have re-knit 1/2 of it.  Won’t be long now.  I’m MUCH happier with it now.

The Monkey socks for Vanessa, so sad.  I’ve finished one repeat of the pattern on the first sock.  I suck!  They are next on my hit-list though so don’t despair too much ‘Ness.  Maybe for Hallowe’en? 

And, seeing as it’s September and completely acceptable to talk about hockey again, my boy got re-signed for another season!  Whoot whoot!  That almost makes up for the fact that the new uniforms are really not very good.  I was sooooooo hoping that orca crest would be gone, but no.  Oh well, at least they are back in the traditional colours.

So that’s why the dog barks all night!

Single mom & two kids living in the laurels of our side yard.  Pretty much right outside the window beside Stella’s house.  Now wonder she goes spare all night!  Note:  they don’t actually have devil eyes.  If they did the dog would have totally lost her mind by now.

Sorry I haven’t been about lately, I’ve been pretending to be on holidays before the new job starts on Monday.  I am more than ready to go back to work.  Turns out I’m not a stay at home person.  Who knew?

I’ve also been working on some August UFO’s.  Here’s the Flickr group.  Some really pretty things are getting all finished.  I’ve finished crocheting & assembling my Larger Than Life Bag.  I just have to take it shopping for some lining fabric.  I want a double thick bag so I need something plain to show through the squares and something scary loud for the interior.  I’m leaning towards drapery ties or premade handles of some sort.  I really don’t want fabric or crocheted so I’ll have to work on that one.

I’ve finally got my tushy in gear on the Monkeys.  Starting my second pattern repeat.  Am I the only one who has a tremendous problem when the first stitch is a purl when working on dpn’s or on two circulars?  I’m finding it very difficult and I gotta say, I’m not thrilled with that first stitch.  It looks sort of loose and wobbly.

And, last but not least, Birkeland Bros has posted up their class schedule for this fall.  I’m all signed up for beginner spinning.  I can take the class on their wheels so I can see which one I like before I buy.  I do really like the look of the Louet’s though.  I really like that almost solid wheel.  If I have anything with spokes I just know that various animals will stick bits of themselves in it while it is spinning.

Lookie lookie!

I was participating in Zoe’s Yarn in a Tea Cup Swap and my lovely partner Suzanne totally spoiled me. Look! She sent Koigu! Very excited, I’ve never knit with Koigu before. I know, I know, it’s Canadian, I’m Canadian, how did happen? Well, it’s just not available in the area and every time I find a place that sells it online, its sold out.

Here are picis of all the wonderful goodies.

The chocolate? Amazing! Years ago my friend and I would get a craving and be crossing the border at three in the morning to go to AM/PM in Blaine for Dove ice cream bars. The border guard thought we were a bit sad but that’s okay. Now I have a whole bar of that chocolate! Okay, not a whole bar anymore, ’cause I already ate some. Hey, at least I took the picture before I ripped it open!

Suzanne also sent me lovely tea time napkins and a box of Black Ceylon tea with Vanilla in it. It smells wonderful.

Here’s another pici of the cup so you can see how pretty it is. Please ignore the dust & pollen. This is out on the deck and let’s be honest, the house is lucky if it gets dusted so we’re not even going to talk about the furniture on the deck getting a regular dusting. Now that I’ve show the world this I do feel a bit obligated to maybe tidy that up a bit. Mom’s shaking her head right now thinking “That is NOT how I raised you!”

Thank you so much Suzanne! You have exquisite taste in yarn, teacups, and of course chocolate.

I also want to get your opinion about this:

I’ve knit a second sleeve using Leanne’s suggestion of using two skeins. I took it even further and actually worked from three and four skeins. The orginal sleeve is on the left and the new on is on the right. I used a lot less of the really dark almost black colour and tried to make the stripes longer and shorter than the standard repeat was in the skein. That and make the colours appear out of order. What do you think?

I’m lucky that I don’t find SWS to be itchy like Danielle does but I am worried about how well it will wear and how bad it may pill. We shall see I suppose. Oh, and Jenny, we can totally hook you up and get you knitting, I promise. We are always looking to bring more people over to the dark side! It all starts with a scarf or a dishcloth and then, before you know it, boom, you have stash.