Knitknacks

THE PERFECT PET

I know a lot of knitters (and non-knitters for that matter) with pets. Often they have multiple pets. Many multiple pets. Two dogs, three cats, bunny rabbits, hamsters, and a partridge in a pear tree. There are a few hardy extreme pet people knitter/spinner/weavers who breed alpacas and llamas.

 

Me….not so much.

 

Really, I support the concept of pets, just not the reality. I did my time with dogs back in the day. Multiple dogs. Big dogs. Big hairy sheddy slobbery lovable dogs. Dogs that required a purchase of the heaviest of the heavy-duty Kirby vacuum cleaners (heavy in all ways!). Dogs that required the giant 50 pound bags of dog chow. Dogs that necessitated tall fences and nocturnal awakenings to go pee during blizzards of course.

 

So nowadays, I want easy-care pets. Pets that are great to look at and admire and take places, but pets that never need feeding or poop-scooping. Pets that are silent and that leave me alone during naptime. Pets that are cute and cuddly and warm and friendly, and nice to look at.

 

So me…I raise felted bags. I have a nice collection of bags now, but there is always room for one more. Here is the latest addition to my menagerie of perfect pets.

 

This is the Zig Bag, designed by LynnH of Colorjoy. I used two different colorways of Noro Kureyon, and two colorways of Lamb’s Pride. I thoroughly enjoyed knitting this pattern, and highly recommend it. I would have to say though that I have thoroughly enjoyed the knitting of every felted bag in my collection. It’s pretty hard to mess up a felted bag. Size and therefore gauge do not have to be exact. They knit up quickly, and the end results are good-looking and always useful. Really, they are the perfect pet.

Are you wondering about the stash of luscious red yarn that is peeking out of the bag? Mmm....that's for another blog post.

  Here’s a photo of the rest of the gang. I did not realize it until this moment, but I seem to stuck in a colorway rut when it comes to felted bags. I hereby vow that the next felted bag I knit for myself is going to be completely different!

BLANKET STATEMENT

If I wait until I have an engaging piece of writing to post, I'll never get posting again, I'm afraid. So here's a quickie to tide us all over....lots of photos to make up for lack of words. 

The woven blankie (second version) was completed in time and delivered to a certain beautiful baby girl.

And here it is in actual use...

While I was at it, I whipped up a soft as velvet sweater for Maura....using SweaterKits Bamboo Velvet.

Details are always important...like this detail:

And the pretty picot trim on the cuff....

She's a bit tiny to fit in the sweater just yet, but it won't take long till she grows enough. Just in the few days that we were there, she was growing and changing.

Here is one of my favorite photos of her:

And just for the record, this is a photo of her father at the same age:

Yep, Maura looks like her daddy, except she's prettier. That comes from her mommy.

I didn't get much knitting done on this trip, but I did manage one special creation...

Close friends know I don't cook often. But when I do, I usually manage to pull off something good. Lynn and I went to Whole Foods in Denver to pull together a meal. Lynn made the pork roast, which was outstanding, and I made these roasted veggies. Don't they look good enough to eat? Trust me; they were.

Stay tuned for the next episode, which will feature the completed Zig Bag!

Edited to add: Holy cow. I just realized that Typepad is not sending me email notification of all my comments. I apologize for not responding to most of you who commented on the last entry. Thank you; I always appreciate comments....as does every blogger. Does anyone know why Typepad has changed this? Grr!

WHAT’S A KNITTER TO DO?

There is so much activity happening in my hands! I wish my hands could keep up with my mind, because the list of  wanna-do’s grows way faster than the list of finished objects. All I can do though, is work one stitch after another and see where it goes. I do have several lists going to keep me semi-organized. One is the To Do Between Now and the End of the Year list, and the other is the To Do Starting January 1^st list.

 

Let’s take stock:

 

I finished another Mable Sweater by Heritage Knits for Abby this time. She is a bit disappointed that it isn’t pink, so I’ve promised her a pink button. Next sweater I knit for her, I will let her pick out the yarn herself.

 

(This is Paige's sweater. Abby's is identical, just larger, except it has a pink button at the top.)

I’m hard at work on the Maxi Zig Bag, another delightful LynnH pattern. This project has made me realize that I have crossed the line into being a color knitter. By that I mean that I am making the colors happen, instead of letting the yarn do all the work. This bag is assisted by the lovely color changes of the Noro Kureyon, mixed with the solids, but I am making the pattern happen. And I love it. I’m just about ready to start the strap, so this will be a finished object very soon. 

 

I’m also plugging away on the Origami Pullover. This is a Frog Tree Alpaca pattern which uses a very clever way of seaming two rectangular pieces into the most lusciously drapey sweater imaginable. However, the largest rectangle is taller than I am, so you can imagine that K1P1 ribbing gets a bit tiresome. Still, it’s a perfect mindless knitting project for the many moments when I have no mind, and the end result is worth it.

I had a great time at Stitches Midwest this year.  A combination of great roomies and great classes made for great fun. The frosting on the cake was getting to spend some time with favorite long-time blogger friends, Monica and Lynnette of PassionKnit.

 

Monica sent me one of her creations.

She describes this by saying that she has been practicing her sewing by working on these bags. If this her practice piece, I can only wonder what she will accomplish when she is done practicing. As best I can tell, this is perfect. And I love it.

 

High on my To DO list RIGHT NOW is new baby knitting and weaving. Because….there is a new baby. I am delighted to announce the birth of my third granddaughter, Maura Catherine.

 

Yep, I feel pretty lucky. The only thing that really matters on my To Do lists...current and future....is to love and cherish my family. Check, check, and check some more.

IF BLANKETS COULD TALK

I joke sometimes that my gauge swatch for a sweater is the entire sweater, and when I’m done then I will know how I really need to adjust the gauge. (Sometimes, I’m not joking.) My woven baby blanket project is shaping up to be just such a joke.

 

I finished seaming the two pieces together today, and by this point I have learned a great deal more about weaving. And about finishing. And about me.

 

One thing I’ve learned about myself is that I don’t learn enough from past mistakes. I practice the fine art of denial to polished perfection. Too bad I don’t apply that much perfection to my projects.

 

Case in point: I know that when I knit anything that requires matching two (or more) pieces, it is more important to count rows than it is to measure a total piece. It is far easier to fudge the slight inconsistentcies of tension than it is to fudge a major inconsistency of measurement. You can guess how I know this.

 

So when I wove the second piece of fabric for the blanket, why on earth did I rely on a guide tape that used measurement, instead of counting each pick….each pass of the weft yarn? The result is that my plaid stripes did not match up perfectly. The result is that when I seamed the pieces, I do not have a perfectly invisible seam. The result is that I have gaps and puckers where I tried to fudge the inconsistencies.

 

Another major booboo is that I used two different yarns in this project….LynnH Cushy Colorsport, and Debbie Bliss Prima. I measured the wraps per inch of each of them. They were not equivalent. But the colors were perfect matches, and I wanted them to be right, so I just went ahead as if they were. I wanted to believe they were close enough that it wouldn’t matter. They weren't.

 

The result is that the places in the plaid where the Colorsport is both warp and weft are just slightly larger than all the other parts of the plaid. So various squares kind of pouf out. And my otherwise lovely selvedge edges wave in and wave out.

 

As I describe all this, it sounds awful. I am not ready to give up quite yet. I purchased an edge trim today, and I’m hoping it will transform the blankie just enough. What do you think? (I can't get the colors to show up right in the monitor. What looks yellow in the blanket is really green.)

 

Here’s what I think. I think I’m going to weave another blanket and not make the same stupid mistakes. I think this blanket is going to stay here with me, and it will be a very nice nap blanket for Abby and Paige. But it will not likely be a new baby gift for any new baby on the horizon.

 

That’s what I think.

MAYBE BABY

I’m ready to bind off another basketweave baby blanket. This is LynnH’s Cushy Blankie pattern, but I’m calling this particular one a Maybe Baby Blanket. That’s because maybe it is for this baby, or maybe it is for that baby, or maybe it’s for a baby that doesn’t even exist yet.

 

In the meantime, I’m making nice progress on a woven baby blanket that is living up to the promise of the lovely hand-dyed Colorjoy Colorsport that sets off the two solid bamboo blends so nicely. I gave up trying to figure out how to do this as a double-weave project, so I will have to do some seaming at the end. Oh well. I’ll get over it.

 

Like many knitters before me, I am adding yet another technique to my fiber creation repertoire. How many years have I been talking about quilting? Don’t answer that. I just took a very basic quilt intro class session, and I have these 9-patch blocks to show for it:

 

I have also learned that I have a 2 ½ hour attention span when it comes to classes of any sort. Knitting, weaving, quilting, underwater basketmaking, what-have-you…..3 hours is 30 minutes too long. My brain and my bottom both go on strike and I need to be done.

 

This could be a problem in a few weeks at Stitches Midwest, where I am scheduled for 15 hours of classes, all done in 3 hour blocks. Please teachers…..take breaks!!

 

Is it my imagination, or did this summer blitz by even faster than usual? Once I retired from the school calendar, and summer vacation could really last till the autumnal equinox, I expected to have that wonderful endless summer feeling again. Instead, I’m feeling that rush of fall productivity that comes with the back-to-school crowd. I can’t say I’m minding it. This fall brings the trip to Stitches, and in October sometime, it brings a new grandchild.

 

In the meantime, my two little grand-girls have celebrated birthdays. Abby is 3!!!

 

And Paige is 1.

 

And the new baby-to-come is also a Maybe Baby. Maybe it will be a girl. Maybe it will be a boy. For sure it will be welcomed with love.

THE LETTER F

It is not unusual, as I make the rounds of other knitting blogs, to see various posts that all revolve around the theme of apologizing for not keeping up the posting. Each time I read that, I think…no, you do not need to apologize for how you spend your time. You do not owe any blog posts to anyone.

So this is not an apology. However, I am a bit chagrined to see how much time I do let slide inbetween posts. It is not because I do not care about my blog; I truly do. It is not because I want to lose readers; I truly don’t. It is not because I have lost interest in knitting; I haven’t. It is not because I am so wrapped up in the weaving, there is no time left for anything else; I’m not and there is.

I think that just leaves lazy. Mea culpa. Now let’s move on.

First, a happy family note. My daughter has spent the last three…or is it four….years of her life acquiring a masters degree and a teaching certificate. She willl be turned loose this fall on a group of high school freshmen in a litte town not too far from Nashville, Tennessee, and they won’t know what hit them. She knows how to make biology interesting. Fascinating, in fact. She knows how to talk to kids. She knows how to teach. Those kids are so lucky; of course they won’t realize it for a while yet. But they are.

Now on to the knitting portion of this production. Do I have any finished objects to show? Hmm…I don’t think I ever posted the completed ZigZag socks.

I’ve also completed blocks 9 and 10 for an afghan. Just two more to go, as soon as Rae gets them published (hint hint nudge nudge).

I’m nearing completion on a beaded scarf for my darling daughter, made with Panda Silk.

About a third of the way on another Colorjoy basketweave blanket.

And making progress on a toddler sweater. (After all, three and one cannot be considered babies anymore.)

And here is what is making me a crazy person lately. I restarted the East Meets West Jacket with a worsted weight solid (Kraemer Summit Hill). I make mistakes regularly. I unknit carefully, and once I had to tear out to my lifeline, which I am now putting in every eight rows. I ask for help frequently (thanks Sarah and LuAnn!). This will be a lengthy project. I often think I am only sticking with it because I have nothing else demanding my attention right now. And because it’s a really neat sweater. And because I’m stubborn.

But if I come back in a few weeks or a few months and say I’ve abandoned it…..or if you never hear me mention it again…..don’t say it comes as any surprise.

ON THE LOOM
Nothing. All my looms are naked, although that is strictly temporary. I completed a simple plain weave scarf out of Regia Bamboo. It is very gratifying that I can quickly weave a gift-worthy scarf. This one went to a friend celebrating her 65th birthday. She said no presents, but I ignored that dictum!

I agree....woven bamboo scarves and baseball caps don't actually complement each other all that well. But the birthday party was at a Tigers baseball game, at Comerica Park in Detroit. Michigan is devastated with all the auto industry job layoffs, and Detroit is particularly hard-hit. But last Friday night the downtown ballpark area was feeling like a happy and healthy place to be. As a special bonus for Carole's birthday, the Tigers won! Yay us!

Hope everyone is having a summer filled with fireworks and farmers market food and fun with friends. I wish the mosquitoes didn't think of me as such a  good friend. Or good food. I'm off to Ann Arbor for the rest of the day to play with certain little girls.

Woven Scarf
Regia Bamboo yarn
Sett at 12epi