J is for

baby JUNO !















oh, what a doll baby, but what a handful ;-) baby juno belongs to dd's boyfriend. he is bigger than in the photos, now he is about 3 months old. you forget just how much work having a puppy is.....

now, back to the fiber. sorry i have been a bad bad blogger, but wasn't home in lake placid last week. spent the week in fort lauderdale, and i am not a hermit down there!



first off, more nancy bush, these are the friday harbor socks from knitting on the road. i just happened to have mountain colors weaver's wool in the stash, the exact color as in the book, how serendipitous is that?




a note on these socks, please go to the interweave website and print the errata for the book, even so, if you knit the charts as written, the lace will not line up. page 41 chart, on the cuff, for rows 3,5,7,and 9 of the cuff (they are not numbered on the chart), you need to knit the first stitch of needle 1 onto needle 4 before you start the row, otherwise the lace pattern does not line up correctly. if you can "read" your knitting, it will be apparent. also, on the row that is numbered 1 on the chart (the first one above the cuff) i did the same maneuver, so that the center of the leg lace pattern lines up with the center of the cuff lace pattern. anal i know.



love love love the evergreen colorway, and love working with the weaver's wool. after knitting with thin sock yarn, these socks flew by!

next up, the new england socks, also from the knitting on the road book still cursing nancy and jessica but you will see that the spell has been broken

started knitting these in lisa souza's sock! in the gold colorway, but the gold was crying no!no! you must knit another pair of eleanora stockings with me, i am so rich and regal.

ok, the yarn won. so restarted them in pumpkin, can't get much more new england than pumpkin, can you?

love the double start cast on, once i wrapped my pea brain around where to make the slip knot...

that nancy bush has so many cool tricks in her knitting repertoire, i love this cast on :-) the only thing i changed about this pattern is that i started the socks on 2.25 lantern moon dpns, knit the first 4 inches, then changed to 2mm bamboo dpns, they fit perfectly!

after knitting mim's eleanora socks, i was dying to try one of her other patterns, seraphim it is, haven't knit a shawl in a long time. webs has lavold's silky wool on sale, the skye blue is perfect. in person, the blue is a lovely very faded denim, i was afraid it would be too pastelly, but it isn't. the drapey fabric is just lovely, must knit myself an everyday cardi with this yarn, it is so soft and lightweight!

now i'm on chart 3, this pattern is again so well written it is a joy to knit, thanks miriam :-)

hope everyone is having a wonderful memorial day weekend!

you really got me

you really got me

you really got me goin', you got me so i can't sleep at night.

damn jessica, damn lisa s, damn nancy bush! who needs sleep when there are socks to be knit?



traveller's socks from knitting on the road by nancy bush, sock! in elektra by lisa souza, inspiration by jessica. what a lemming am i.



good thing my camera doesn't have macro, or you would all see just how long my leg hair is ;-)





and now you will all be cursing me cause you can't get the song out of your head.

spinning and knitting, whoot!

you got your spinning, you got your knitting, all right here folks!

trying to clean up the guest stash room, i came across a bit of roving that sandy sitzman had tied around the crisp spinning wheel no longer being made i bought from her (sorry linda d, i still love it).

decided to spin it 3 ply, so i divided the roving into 3 lengths, then split them so i had 30 splits, hoping to mix up the colors.

spun it up on the reeves norwegian that i picked up at madrona, thanks denise:-)

this wheel spins like butter, that rick reeves is a master! too bad he isn't making wheels any longer.

then plied the 3 bobbins, first i started using a reeves lazy kate, but it has no tension, gah! switched the bobbins onto a jensen kate, MUCH better! with no tension, those thin plies were worming back all over themselves, not a good thing.

wound the yarn off onto the niddy noddy, gave it yarn a nice lavender shampoo and conditioning, dried it on the fancy skein dryer, and have about 132 yds of fairly thin yarn, somewhere between a laceweight and fingering.

now to add it to the shrine of handspun yarns ;-)

just the other day i saw telling jessica that i find myself knitting more and more plain vanilla stockinette socks, and she was saying it's all about the patterns for her. well i must change my mind. have had my eye on the eleanora de toreno socks for a while, but i knew they would be too large for my skinny legs. til i got some of lisa s' sock! the old batch was thinner than the new sock! and i managed to snag some of the old skeins, this one is celadon. even with the thin yarn, and size 0 needles used throughout, i still had to modify the pattern with more decreases, but i LOVE this pattern, especially the toe decreases, so well written, and i love the historical background of eleanora and her stockings :-) thanks miriam for a wonderful pattern!

the pattern is written top down, with a turned down edge, so you start with a provisional cast on, then pick up the stitches and knit them one together with the working stitches. sorry if some of the photos aren't too clear, my camera is oldish!

thanks to all for your thoughts and prayers for my son :-)

all my ducks in a row

spent the weekend knitting hats for ryan's dulaan project. it is quite amazing how far 5 skeins of cascade 220 will stretch. this yarn was first purchased for a knitted tam class with beth brown-reinsel at madrona in 2005. then the 3 blues were used to knit squares for christine's blue afghan, now 5 hats for dulaan. what a value!


ms$w was last weekend, and i wasn't there. but was i the tiniest bit upset? no. things really do have a way of working out for the best. if i had planned on going to ms$w, i would have missed out on seeing my son and ddil. they decided last minute to come to south florida to visit my mom for the weekend, so i got to see them saturday night and sunday lunch.


if you are the praying kind, please keep my son bart in your prayers. he is a navy pilot and is being deployed overseas at the end of may for 6 months.

keep safe my baby :-)

one of these things is not like the other

one of these things is not like the other!
the whole time i was knitting the second sock, that old sesame street song kept playing in my head.

they are the ssaammee color, and the ssaammee dyelot, but one is definitely lighter than the other. or conversely, one is definitely darker than the other ;-)



beloved koigu from madrona, judy gibson you're putting me on socks.

and just for the hell of it, cranked out another pair, this time with knitpicks sock memories, flyfishing colorway. hmm, this color isn't on their website, maybe it's discontinued?


the knitpicks is not shiny at all like the koigu, and is a squinchier, i used 64 stitches instead of 60. but the fabric is much thicker without as much stretch as the koigu. and even though these are quite a bit longer in the foot, i still can't use up all the yarn. hmm, maybe i need to make kneesocks?

one thing i do like about these toe-ups is that they are so darn cute dangling from the needles!

hope all of you lucky people at ms$w are having a fabulous time without me, sigh.

my "I"

is the infant of prague. one of my best friends is on her way to prague as we speak. she and i were having lunch with my mom and her twin sister, and as our family is czech, and i knew my cousins had been to prague, we asked my aunt if there was anything in prague that she had to see.



my aunt agnes said, oh, you must see the infant of prague! i'd never heard of the infant before, so we headed to borders to check out the guide books.




what a fascinating story- and i love love love all his elaborate handstitched outfits. sent to the infant from all over the world.




someday i would like to go see the infant of prague myself, but i tease tom that he would have to roll me home , as i would eat every knedliky dumpling in sight! and let's not forget the apple strudel...

feels like spring

socks! love love love this color of koigu- p100l (i think, the writing on the tag is hard to read).
i was being such a good girl at madrona, til the last day when linda's knitnstitch had a buy 4 get 1 free deal on koigu. gah, who could resist?

these socks started off as a toe up version of evelyn clark's go with the flow socks, interweave knits summer 2005. but after i'd gotten about halfway up the foot, i kept looking at the lace, then looking at the plain stockinette sole, and i liked the plain stockinette side better.



so frog back to the toe, and start over with just plain old vanilla knit knit knit. so soothing.
i got to knit on the train home. deliscious, yummy koigu, sleepless in seattle and urban cowboy playing on my laptop, who could ask for more?


decided to try the picot edge, very nice, then to cast off, used a kitchener to cast off the live stitches to the reverse stockinette of the sock innards. word to the wise- you must do the kitchener on the top live stitches as a stockinette stitch, and the kitchener on the reverse stockinette stitches as a purl, otherwise you will have to rip the kitchener out and have to start over......
also, kitchener the live stitches to one row lower on the main sock body. iow, if you have 8 rows of knitting after the picot row, kichener the live stitches to the 9th row down on the main cuff, the picot will lay perfectly flat, also to avoid more frogging......