proud mama

whoohoo!
baby boy got the sweater and socks in the mail :-) the sweater is a perfect fit!
ds and ddil just installed the butcher block countertops themselves, looking good.





heh heh, i woke him up this afternoon to ask if the package had arrived, bachelor party last night.

bronte is finished, just have to block her.

hmm, brain is doing pretty well, time to start those deliscious oak leaf and squirrel mittens. after taking the estonian lace class with nancy bush, decided to try some of those estonian braid thingies from folk knitting in estonia. now when i read the book, i have nancy bush's voice inside my head, it's like she's reading to me. welcome to my strange little world ;-)

how far is bohemia from estonia? as soon as i started the braid, i felt like i'd been knitting them all my life! maybe it was all those dumplings i ate as a child...

ready for mr. postman

to go along with the olympic sweater, i knit ds a pair of socks. now that he has discovered the true joy that can only come from handknit socks ;-)






after the pooling fiasco, decided to change color and pattern, thank the fsm for a huge sock yarn stash!
this combo worked much better together, mountain colors weaver's wool again, this time pine needle (must be discontinued, it's not listed). the photo is too light, in real life the colors are darker and blend better. the pattern is cabled foot wrapper, by fibertrends.
hope they fit :-)









what to knit next? i'm not feeling up to anything mind-challenging, or any spinning. maybe i'll get a jump on christmas knitting, and start another bronte. have tons of deep aubergine in stash, dd loves that color...

cue olympic music!

this olympian is finished!

sweater is blocking on the carpet, after having the obligatory shampoo and conditioning.
the jamieson's soft shetland changes quite a bit after a bath, the yarn really blooms and gets softer. the color, peppercorn (discontinued) totally changes in different light. sometimes it looks brown, sometimes green.
hope it fits ds, as the colors will look better on him. he has the most incredible green eyes.

i am really happy with the way the sweater turned out, and am going to try and write the pattern down. it would be a good first sweater.

started knitting a pair of socks for ds, heh heh, he has been loving the first pair.
but look, this mountain colors weavers wool (color yellowstone) is pooling badly, blech. i love this pattern, montana wheat socks, and have used it before. but hate the way it's pooling here.
so will use a different color.

one thing i've learned over the last few years is, if i don't like the way a project is looking, frog it! why keep going, hoping some kind knitting fairy is going to wave a wand and make it work?

knitter down

i knew it when i was on the plane from denver to fort lauderdale, everyone was coughing and sneezing. the couple next to me brought their own toilet paper roll for nose blowing.
then i had to go and jinx myself by writing on one of my lists that this the the first time in 3 years i haven't gotten as sinus infection. tempting fate or what?
gah, my head is exploding, and the needles have been dormant since thursday night.
thank god the olympics still have a few days left.

oh no, a mogul!

cruising up to the neckband, up pops a mogul.

i can either leave the live stitches for the neck and back, pick up the sides of the neck, and continue up the one inch of neckband. this creates a continuous line of cable pattern up the back. hmm, not sure if i like it.

so, rip, try binding off stitches, and picking them back up, to create a line of demarkation. duh, the picked up stitches do not line up with the cables. rip rip.

now i'm knitting a small band of the cable, it would be as long as the neck, and grafted. then sewn on.

but, does it look too "girly"? the sweater will be for either dh or ds.
all opinions will be appreciated :-)

shushing across the frozen fields

on my olympic sweater. have cruised through the stockinette body, increased for the cabled pattern yoke, and decreased for the 3 needle bind-off.



"bob, do you think she made a wise choice decreasing 6 stitches on each shoulder to avoid cable splaying? will the decrease cause the shoulder to pull in, thus taking points off her overall score?"

success, she scores an 8.5 for perfect shoulder measurement!



"bob, for the next event, do you think she will go straight to the sleeves, or pick up for the neckband?"

ah madrona

where to start, hmm, maybe the best part of all was rooming with denise :-)
when janine had to cancel because of her cursed foot (next year for sure girl), i was lucky enough to bunk with denise. even though we are both on the same list, we'd never met before. i hope denise feels the same, i felt like we hit it off right off the bat! she was also kind enough to have my reeves norwegian shipped to her and truck it down, thanks :-)

we both had spinning and knitting estonian lace taught by judith mackenzie mccuin and nancy bush. judith taught the spinning in the morning, and nancy the knitting in the afternoon. this class was thursday and friday. let me just say this, charlene schurch said to me, if judith taught a class on how to boil water people would sign up. i'd be the first on the list. all that woman has to do is open her mouth to speak and i am entranced.
also in the class were marti, jessica, and stephanie. poor jessica (who is funnier than s**t) got busted for knitting her olympic sweater instead of the class project ;-0

here i am grinning idiotically, judith had just told me my tiny lace skein was perfect! omg, i could die happy now :-)

did pick up quite a few tips in the knitting section, esp. the picking up the selvege bit. denise did not like knitting the nupps;-) will post a photo of the sample if i ever block it.

angela, holly, and lara shopped enough at the market to bump up the gdp. made me feel quite virtuous, they did. lara has designed and knit the most beautiful sweater i have ever seen in my life (heeheehee), of course didn't get a photo, will ask angela.

karen kindly brought me 3 yarn choices to pick from for the squirrel and oak leaf mittens.

friday night was the fibertraditions get together. we had me, denise, marti, loren, jessica, angela, holly, katie swanson, sandy blue, nancy, sam, stephanie, barb, holly, jen. i wish i had had more to talk to everyone! hopefully next year...

saturday's classes were spinning cashmere and spinning for color. maybe i should have gone to bed earlier friday.
the cashmere class was wonderful, i got to sit next to katie. the samples judith brought were breathtaking. the first was a cashmere jacket, 200 years old, the background is very finely woven black cashmere in a herringbone pattern, with gorgeous flowers embroidered all over.

the second was a lovely jacquard woven paisley shawl.

the third was an indigo dyed shawl woven by judith. soft as a cloud :-)

i am not as good a cashmere spinner as a lace spinner. heh heh, maybe that's good for my pocketbook.

the afternoon class was all about color and spinning. the main exercise was picking 4 colors from the rainbow of merino dyed top, then spinning across the top of 3, dropping and adding a color. i don't do well with the muching across the top, later judith showed us how to take a staple length of all 4 colors on a comb, and pulling them through a diz. this would be a better method for me.

saturday night was the banquet, replete with petit fours decorated with christmas wreaths and candy canes, hmmmm. we all stayed up way too late knitting and chatting on the third floor, thank god i hadn't taken any classes sunday!

sunday denise packed up, then we hit the market. can you say buy 4 get one free koigu? most of sunday was spent knitting with katie and marti, it was so nice to get to know them both better.
poor suzanne must have been exhausted, marti and i both snapped this photo. suzanne did a marvelous job putting the whole retreat together.

and i leave you with my olymic sweater, basking in the fireglow.

no i haven't

fallen off the face of the earth ;-)
i just flew back to florida fron the madrona arts retreat. i don't know how i'll find the words to decribe how delisciously wonderful it was.
will try to get the photos up!
i've missed the blog!!

d is for

donegal!!!!

don't know if i'm jumping the gun on the d thang, but i couldn't resist!
donegal turned out much better than i ever dreamed :-) the rowan yorkshire tweed 4ply is so soft i can wear it next to my skin, i can't wear shetland at all.



now i get to show it off at madrona. madrona was so much fun last year, just walking in the lobby all you can say is- st.brigid, ooh, little rivers, ooh, cover from sweaters from camp. oh, henry VIII, til your head spins ;-0

d is for daisy, one of our new cow mamas, she had a little grey bull :-)



d is for dog, my madaket is truly (wo)man's best friend. i love our shotsie, but madaket has stolen my heart. yesterday she went with me and tom to the ranch, and she drank out of the cow trough like a big girl ;-)





best of all d is for dd, words cannot describe how much i love her. my dd is brilliantly smart, funny, beautiful inside and out, compassionate, loyal, and so much fun! look at this little facey facey, i could have eaten her up with a spoon :-) hard to believe she's 17!

why is it?

that even when you have a large enough yarn stash that one of your favorite vendors calls it your yarn inventory, you never have the right yarn when you come across a pattern that you want to knit NOW?




look at how absolutely glorious these mittens are!


in case you don't know, the name of our ranch (farm) is oak grove, because there are tons of beautiful big oak trees. hence i am enamored of all things oakish and acornish. i'll have to wait til madrona to pick up some yarn. thank you hello yarn lady for the mitten pattern :-)




donegal is still drying, it's been pouring here yesterday and today, so it's taking ages to dry.

i did the unthinkable

taking a page from june's book, i threw donegal in the dryer :-O
my gauge was a tad loose for donegal, the sweater body was 45" instead of the 41" in the pattern.



so after knitting the neckband and tacking down the steeks, i gave her a nice shampoo and conditioning. then i turned her inside out and put her in the dryer on low. checked every few minutes and when the body measured 21" across, laid the sweater on the dining room table to finish drying.

sorry terri, i was going to put donegal on the wooly board and take a photo for you. but then i realized that the corrugated ribbing is a little tighter than the sweater body, and if i would have put it on the wooly board, the ribbing would be stretched to the size of the body.

another thing i did differently, norman kennedy does the wrapped steek, and then weaves the ends in. i tried this with the small steeks at the neck and back. they were knit like regular steeks, then i unraveled them and wove in the ends. i like this, you don't get the bulk of the tacked down steek, but i'd hate to have to weave in all the ends for the armhole steeks ;-) i'll take a photo of the inside once donegal is dry.

now what to knit before the olympics...

p.s. i forgot to write which yarns i used for donegal. it drives me nuts when you read a blog, and can't figure out what the yarn is ;-) the original rowan yarn is discontinued, so i subbed mostly rowan yorkshire tweed 4-ply and 2 colors are rowan scottish tweed 4ply (or whatever they are calling it now). a friend of mine, thanks joy!, kindly made me a color card with the original yarns, so i could match them up. the subs are excellent :-)

p.p.s. i have a confession to make, poetry makes my eyes glaze over. i love to read books, fiction, non-fiction, anything. but poetry just doesn't do it for me. the only line i like is the host of golden daffodils bit.

c is is also for consternation

thanks for the shove off of sleeve island ;-)


but gah, about half way through the sleeve i realized there wouldn't be enough knight (the sub for sapphire) to finish! did squeak through the sleeve, but definitely cannot finish the neckband. one tiny ball is winging way to me from two swans.