Welcome to the 2, 5 and 10 club

Welcome to the 2, 5 and 10 club!

I really hoped to get this job done last night so all I would have to do was sit and knit till later today when I plan to get groceries.  Oh well.  It is all yarn.

I got through things much faster than I thought I would yesterday.  I envisioned culling the stash would take me several days, but it went rather quickly and took only a couple of hours.  I still have to reorganize the stash, though. Better to do that after when I see if anything has to come back into the house.

Last year pricing was easy.  I really had no love left for what went and just really wanted them gone.  Bags were priced at 2 and 5 dollars.  There were sweater quantities that were 5 dollars and I was good with that.  This year it is a little harder.

These are yarns that I would use, but that are never going to get chosen because there are so many other good yarns that are going to end up getting chosen first.

Pounds and pounds and pounds of yarn.  That big bag is about three and a half feet high and is almost too heavy to pull along the floor. The other bag which I am working on right now, was about half that.  There are cottons.  There is wool.  There are fancy shmancy hand dyes.  There is cashmere. There is silk.  There is lace. There are single skeins.  There is yarn for sweaters.  There is yarn for delicate shawls. 

I did not go through the chunky yarn and the sock yarn yet.  I don't have a lot of chunky yarn and what I have is pretty nice.  At this point, I think I am keeping it all.  And sock yarn?  There is so much.  I do want to go through it.  There are colour ranges that I bought for Brian and thought I might use for myself, but honestly, there is too much as well as there being too much that is too plain.  Socks are my happy place and that means colourful, cheerful and apparently orange things.   I have to be a bit careful with it though.  I will need many colours of fingering weight for the garden of my miniature house and there are some that would be great high contrast colours for monster socks.

I was going through and letting go long before KonMari was a thing. I have gone through a lot of stuff in the last six years and each time I do, I end up thinking about the nature of our connection, our emotional involvement with our stuff, why we attach to it and what need did it fill for us? I also think about why, be it incidental or purposeful, in the end, some things that that we spent a lot of time building, making, assembling, become so easy to let go of and why other, sometimes very surprising things are so hard to let go.  Over all my moves and sorting and clearing out homes and houses and lives, I find it fascinating that I learned as much about myself in letting go as I did collecting and assembling my many and various collections, maybe more.  

The 2, 5 and ten club happens on Saturday from 9 to 4.  If you bring a chair, there will be space to sit and knit.  There will also be a heat lamp and a roof to stay dry under because...

 

A touch of snow and it is about time.  I hope for lots of it.  It is very dry here and we need it.  

    

Down to the wire or getting ready for garage sale two.

Usually on  Monday, I have lots to say and lots to show you, but that isn't quite how I feel this morning.  I feel kind of sluggish and thick of head. That ought to improve once I get some coffee in my system.  

I did a lot of knitting on my sweater over the weekend. Miles of stockinette are perfect F1 Race day knitting.   I only have 2 inches to go if I go by the standards of the pattern.  I do think about making it longer but then I go back to the photos of other people's projects and I'm not sure that would be a good idea.  The better looking tops are on people with no notes or no notes about changes to the pattern.  What seems to happen with extra length is that the side hemlines become too long and can look a bit out of place. It is possible that some nitter's have not done the short row section at the back nd that that leads to the long look sides.  Either way, I hope my extra girth will give it the support it needs to look balanced.  I'm going to keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.  

I did knit bit on the lace and there was some sock knitting too, but the sweater won out.  It looks good and I can't wait to wear it.

Mot of the day is going to be preparations for the town wide garage sale.  I'm a bit worried about rain, but the landlord has said the garage will be ready enough to keep goods undercover should it be a miserable weekend.  Today I will be digging out the rest of the household things to go on the sale tables. After today's work, the rest of the week is going to be devoted to a deep and thorough going through of the yarn.  I love my yarn, but there are some things that I know I am just not going to get to.  I have lots of single fingering weights and really would like to go through those as well as sweaters quantities.  I love it all but really, seriously, I want to work with the things I love best.  There aren't really very many stinkers in the stash but there are some yarns that will never be my first choice to work with.

At the same time, I want to organize my stash better.  All these additions and deletions and busy times and all the general living has meant that when I added something or was merging tubs of yarn, things often just got shoved where it would fit. Sometimes, particularly nearing the end of the job of a stash dive, things just got 'put' so it would be done.  When I look at the closet now, I can see there are some tubs that have room in them and other tubs that are over flowing. By going through and clearing out a few more tubs of yarn and by reorganizing as I go, there should be room to do a better job of putting yarn together by the kind of project I would use it for.         

It's an ongoing job really, sort of like laundry and dishes.  Living with it, using it, taking yarn in and out, means that there is always an ebb and flow of fibre and every once in a while, just like dishes and laundry, you have to deal with it.  The bonus is it is much more fun dealing with the yarn.  

Even when you are not just organizing, but are actively seeking to get some of it out of your own stash and into the stashes of other nice knitters and crocheters.  

One Step Back

I've done myself a rotten thing this morning, and after all the handling by the kids, and all it's previous adventures, in a lot of wys, it isn't  surprise that it was me what done it.

I dropped my tablet.  It was sitting on a WIP bin, sturdy as they are for such things (see Ikea Bosnas) and I just caught the side of it while I was turning after setting my coffee cup down. and splat, flat on the floor.  I damaged not only the glass, but the digitizer too, so it is pooched.  

I have often thought of this day, knowing life for what it is.  All good things come to an end, and knowing that I wouldn't be prepared to spend that much money again for a tablet, and I have often thought about what I would replace it with.  Part of me says an inexpensive little tablet, but for one thing.  I loathe on screen keyboards.  Completely.  Utterly.  They are despicable things that only irritate.  

A keyboard was one of the reasons that I bought the Surface tablet in the first place.  That and its ability to attach USB peripherals to it.  It made it computer like for when I can't get to my computer. In a lot of ways, the Surface was more than I needed, but when the keyboard died and wasn't available for sale anywhere, my love of the Surface dropped sharply off. After all this time, the things I want from a alternate computing device are exactly the same as they were when I got the Surface.

In a lot of ways, I miss my old laptop.  It still works and there are still things I use it for, but because we could never override it's failed hardwired modem, it has no connection to the outside world anymore.  I loved my lappy.  The Surface did and did not replace it.

I still want a keyboard.  I still want, even more, so need to be able to connect to USB devices.  I still want reasonable portability and not too much weight.  I'd like it to be just the smallest bit sturdier than the constant worry about breaking it.  What I really need is something built like a kids Leapfrog tablet or  with an Otter box  but not an Apple thing because there are some things in life no one really needs.  In mine it would be anything from Apple.  Because of these various things I am probably going to go back to a small laptop. 

In some ways, it may seem like a step back, but for the way I work and the way I use things, it's not  bad step back.  Still...

Creature of Routine

I seem to have developed a funny little routine.  First thing in the morning, I knit a couple rows on Emmett's scarf.

 

I do mean a couple of rows.  Slow going but it us going. Then I have coffee.

And then I pick up socks.  There are several pair at hand and even though I have enough socks at the moment,

they still part of my warm up routine. You can even see the single skein of ragg look sock yarn that is just waiting for a set of needles. It's another new project, that will, I hope, take the place of sock knitting for the rest of the year.

Ans then I grab the lace and knit at least one pattern repeat of the pattern.

Then, and only then are my hands sufficiently warmed up to work on the top.

It's really starting to look like the top I imagined.  Each of the last two days, I have gotten enough done that I can feel really pleased with my progress.

Each pink marker shows the days starting point.  The other significant thing about this picture is that I just started the second ball of the grey.  These balls are big.  I won't be getting the same number of rows the next ball.  The top is getting wider fast, as the flowing hem is created.  

And so it goes, knitting, focusing on this top till I can knit no more for the day.  I noticed that these projects have been worked on in exactly the same order the last few days, with my second cup of coffee. While I am sure the coffee prompted the revelation, I have no idea what is driving the routine.  I only know it is.

The Journey

A friend of mine was talking about how satisfying it was to repair a tool he uses very occasionally for woodworking.  I pointed out that working on your tools is a separate hobby from working with your tools.  And this morning I read an article from Mason Dixon about how having a secret hobby is good for the soul.  

This blog would be my secret hobby, I guess and yes it is good for my soul.  It is certainly an important part of my day, giving structure and order to my life.  But if you are reading this, you know this secret, and what I would rather talk about today is my hobby of collecting yarn.  Because I dearly do love to collect yarn.

There is always a parade of yarns coming through this blog. I don't show all of them here unless it has been part of my adventures  in other ways, or like yesterday, where I didn't really have anything else to say.

With a stash the size of mine, you would think I wouldn't need any yarn but sometimes, I buy just for the sheer joy of having that particular colour and fibre, of being able to sit back and hold it in my lap, and run my fingers through the pile of skeins.

Looking at the yarn sitting on a shelf in the cabinet gives me a sense of satisfaction.  It isn't that I own it.  It is not about ownership at all.  It's about the possibilities it lets me dream about.  If I have yarn, I can dream endlessly about where it might take me and what paths it will lead me down. That all I have to do to go on that journey, is to pick it up and start to play.  The hobby of collecting yarn is about the journey before it becomes a usable thing.  

When I look at all the things I love to do, reading, knitting, music, watching movies even,  I love each because of where they take me, what adventures I go on through them, and with them.  It isn't a revelation to me at all that this is so, but it might be to someone far down the road, who happens on this blog, and wonders about the person who wrote so faithfully and so long about small things. 

A Good Stop

The yarn store was open, so I had a nice visit.  I came home with a few things and one thing I was hoping for.

This is my bonus yarn, Berroco Remix in the aran weight rather than the light that I am working with now.  They call it a pink but to me it reads much more like a lavender tweed with some pink in it.  I am so pleased to find this. It's a wonderful yarn to work with.

What I was hoping for was more linen. This is Fibra Natura Flax Lace.   I picked some up last year on my stop at the end of my epic journey

but wanted more to do a Shakerag top from the Mason Dixon Field Guide No.6, Transparency. It is a easy styled striped top where the stripes are made by double stranding the yarn and then single stranding.  I love the way it looks, and I love that easy style.

So now my only problem is that I want to knit it immediately.  However, I will behave.  No casting on new tops till I finish the one I am working on.

On the Road Again

This morning finds me in Saskatoon.  I'm here visiting family and with a bit of luck, the yarn store.  But first coffee!.  I meet my brother shortly for a bit of breakfast and then to the yarn store if open and then home.  

And if the very nice owner of the yarn store is taking a day off, I do have stash, I will be sadder but my bank will be happier.  It all works out in the end and I can catch her next time.

It'a Official

It's official.  I am half done the lace edging for the Icelandic shawl.

I'm looking for a big wide shawl from this.  The size is one of the reasons I wear my black and red Einband shawl as much as I do and I want something of a similar size this time.  Since the start I figured I would probably be making it wider than the pattern requires.  

Not so.  This reaches from my fingertips to past my other shoulder.  And that is without blocking the wondrous way Einband blocks.  It will be generously wide.

I really enjoy knitting on this. I haven't worked on this for any large amount of time since catching the error.  I knit a motif here and there between things.  It only takes a few minutes to zip out the twelve rows.  And suddenly, half done.

A Happy Pile of Stuff

Further to my falling in love with Sachiyo Ishii's books, I was spinning with a friend yesterday morning and here you are

the goat from her book!  It is really quite sweet and wonderfully detailed.

And here is some spinning!

I still know how to do it!  Not that I expected to forget mind you.  Sometimes I wonder if the knowing some of these things is not an inherited trait, so deep do these things run through me, and all I need is a reminder, an awakening, to know what and how to do things. Not that I do them perfectly.  I think that will take a lifetime to accomplish but fibre work comes so freely to my hands. I had  marvellous time.  Much wool was spun!

After spinning, I took myself off to the fabric store.  I almost cannot bear to look in my clothes drawers, so devoid of colour and pattern they are. I tend to simple and for years I have tended to basic colours, worn topped with bright scarves and more recently, interesting sweaters, but summer is soon here and I just want more than plain t shirts.  I was hoping for at least one wild print like the Hawaiian shirts Magnum PI made famous in my youth.  I wanted wild flora and fauna, ferns and toucans and Bird of Paradise flowers.

I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for.  I wanted soft flowy drapey knits in rayon or cotton polyester with vibrant prints, but there were no fabrics such as I wanted to be had.  The printed knits were all heavy, more suitable for skirts or just straight woven cottons.  Or kiddie prints and not even too many of those.  I found a few things that will add a bit of life though so not at all a waste of time.

There is a really soft flowing wide striped rayon knit fabric and two lovely striped pieces, also rayon, that will make marvellous tops but the real find is this one.

A Missoni like remnant from a bin of 'stuff'.

It isn't very wide so there isn't enough for a top all on it's own, but in truth, I don't think it would show off just how lovely the colour and pattern is as a standalone.  It would almost overwhelm itself.  I'm going to insert a section of it in some of the black knit fabric to give it just the right amount of punch.  There is something about black off setting a strong colour or design that makes my heart beat just a little faster!

The other thing I wanted to show you actually happened while I was off on my knitting retreat though I only picked it up yesterday.  I won this sweet bouquet in a silent auction.  It's almost too cute to break apart.  It's a tiny boozy delight!  Not that I drink much.  A little goes a long way but this was just too sweet to not try for.

Congratulations on a great fundraiser to the Bruderheim Firefighter's Association entry into the Fire Fighter's Stair Climb Challenge.  My daughter in law, Olga, is part of the stair climb team and I am so gosh darn proud of her.  But to everyone with the Bruderheim Firefighter's Association, you are amazing people and your work is making hospice care better for everyone.

A Refresh

There was  lovely thread on Ravelry the other day.  A lady asked what people thought about knitting a farm for a wide window ledge in her home.  She had a pattern book by a Sachiyo Ishii , Mini Knitted Farmyard  , she loved knitting little things, but wondered if she was possibly going just a bit off her rocker and that people would start to wonder about her.  She really wanted to do it, but just wasn't sure what people would think and needed some confirmation from other Ravelers.  She got it in spades.  

Thanks to this conversation, I have an entire new line of books to think about.

I have had these books for a long time 

 

   

and have firm plans in place to use them with my miniature adventures.  But I also have Knit the Christmas Story and have spoken of my desire to have a copy of Jean Greenhowe's knitted dinosaur book and an abiding love for Frankie Brown's woodland and seasons wreaths.  I love little things.  

So when I say I have fallen for Sachiyo Ishii's work, that would be understating the case.  For not only does she have a book on a farmyard, she has  book of a Mini Knitted Ocean, and  Mini Knitted Woodland, she has a Mini Knitted Cosmos.  Who wouldn't want to knit a Mini Knitted Cosmos?  

These are adorable little things and what the heck, I want them.  And I want to knit them.  I wonder if a miniature house could have a mini knitted fish tank?  I do have some teeny tiny knitting needles...

It was so lovely to think about knitting things as sweetly silly as these.  It is so easy to get bogged down in gift knitting and ought to knits and just the usual things you like to knit.  It shouldn't but it happens so it is always delightful when something pops up that is just silly happy joyful knitting.  Knitting should bring joy and should illuminate the dark part of your soul.  It usually does, but a refresh of a different sort always makes me happy.

Today I am off spinning.  Haven't done that in a while so that too is a kind of refresh.  And I'm stopping at the fabric store.  The whole day is a kind of refresh.

More Adventures

When I was going through yarn a few weeks ago, I pulled out a few things that I would like to use for Cassie.  She has a little top from a few years ago

That she dearly loves and still tries to wear, but she has a bit of trouble getting it over her head.  I know why she loves it too.  It was the bamboo based yarns that she loves the feel of. 

I don't have a lot of things with Bamboo or rayon like fabrics where the rayon like feel is what gives the yarn its character.  I did have this.

It is a bamboo nylon blend and is just wonderfully slinky.  I purchased it for a shawl of some kind but there is lots to make my Cassie a top.

I found four skeins of red and two of white in a box of un-entered on Ravelry stash.   It's Flirt, an adult reskeining of  Sirdar's Baby Bamboo. 

It was kind of a tough call but I have been thinking about intarsia in the round lately and have been thinking of trying the technique so the red and white won the day.

I have almost 600 metres of yarn so I am going to aim for the basic but very modern shape of Little Boxy by Joji Locatelli.  It is worked bottom up so I am already worried about yarn consumption. I'm backing myself up with a ball of white Kertzer bamboo sock yarn.  It may be a different gauge than the Baby bamboo, but it's what I have on hand. My other and more likely option is trying to find Baby Bamboo in this kind of red or pure white or back.  

The plan is to start the intarsia in the middle of the front and to switch colours in the middle of the back.  Each colour will be offset from each other, sort of like, so that when one side of the front is red the other will be white, in the same way her little top is offset in the first photo.  This will be regular through the body of the sweater and if, please heaven, if I have enough yarn, will go back to red only to do shoulders and sleeves. 

It's an adventure right?  A kind of dangerous one if you consider the prospect of knitting this way without any idea of what kind of yarn consumption you will have.  In truth the only danger is that it won't work out and I will have to go back and reknit, working in a bit of a different dye lot or colour of Baby Bamboo.  Time is the only real loss and since this is all about learning a new technique, no loss at all.  Just adventure.     

It's going to be a busy week.

What a great weekend for knitting.  There was lots of F1 coverage to watch  and my sweater is now at the place where it makes great race knitting.  I did a lot.  

Doesn't look like a lot of knitting, does it? Not for a  whole weekend.  It looks like an average amount of knitting until you know the secret of this top.  The secret of this top is what is going on at the underarm.

There are some pretty dramatic increases happening at the underarm, that give this top it's lovely shape and drape.  The pin is the front edge of the armscye and you can see the dramatic flare.  It does mean a lot of knitting.  I've already increased the side sections to the point where together, the stitch counts are the same as the front.  There is a long way to go till I stop the increases, many any inches, so there is a lot of knitting till this top is done. By the end, it will almost be like knitting two fronts and two backs on an average top. It is worth it, I think.  It does give this top a distinctive look and I do indeed love the drape that it gives the whole thing.  It is a good thing though,  that I really do like this yarn.

I do hope to get a good bit of knitting in today, but the other thing I am doing is working on getting things out for the town wide garage sale.  Last spring was so busy, I forgot half the things that I meant to put out.  This year, I am working on tossing all the closets and really, finally getting rid of things I have carried too long that are never going to be used by me. 

Which does mean that I will be going through all the yarn again. I did get rid of a good bunch of things last year, but the things that were set aside for the sale since the day I moved here, were never pulled out in the rush of last years preparations.  And there are things that I debated putting out last time, that will probably end up going too.  I've also been thinking of including the leftovers.  Because I bought for sweater quantities for a large size person, and because some of those yarns are being used for things other than sweaters, there are some pretty significant remainders.  It is taking up more room than I want to spend on it.

The other thing I am debating about is some of my sewing stash.  There are some fabrics that don't fit my life anymore.  I'm not sure what I would use them for now, so it may be time to put them out for adoption.

I am going to put out a couple books again.  I have some lovely books of afghan patterns to crochet, and I was quite surprised when they did not go last year. They are great books with really nice designs, but my head isn't there anymore.  And as much as it pains me to get rid of yet more books, if they don't sell this time, they are destined to go somewhere else .  I just don't need them.

If I add up the big and small things it makes a pretty good pile of stuff that I want to go.    I know I had to buy a 'table' (sale license fee five whole dollars) s I ought to do that today.  Though now that I think of it, I probably ought to check that we are having the town wide garage sale.  sheesh.  Talk about starting at the end of a process! 

 

Adventures

Sometimes knitting is an adventure and sometimes knitting is work.  Fun but still work.  I prefer the adventure, but just like when you misinterpret a map, and have to go back, sometimes you have to retrace your knitted steps.

If you look at this picture again,

you will notice a funky looking triangle of openwork right beside the marker.  I investigated and found I had skipped a row of plain work which made the whole motif wibbly wobbly.  It really didn't look right but it could have been blocked into decency and I might have left it but for one thing.  There is another marker pinning a missed stitch in one motif  farther back.  

Two mistakes in such a small piece of work?  It was a mess.

I pulled back and fixed both problems.  It took most of the morning where I did nothing but knit.

All good.  It's as if yesterday's mistakes never happened.  I am one motif from yesterdays starting point. 

I did knit on several other things, the sweater in Remix Light and another experimental piece.  Neither of those are ready for photography.  The sweater because it is in the long swath of stockinette and isn't far enough along to see anything other than the yoke, and the experiment because I don't know if it will work.   

I don't know where the day will take me.  There is a measure of adventure in that.  So off I go into adventure, with my needles, yarn, a good book for reading breaks and my trusty coffee sidekick.  Adventure is my middle name.

Of Skirts on Pink Dresses

I did knit  bit yesterday but most of the day was taken up with sewing and thinking of sewing.  I worked on Cassie's dress.

When last you saw her dress, it fit her!  I attached the skirt in a way that allowed for no torso expansion, and while it fit her now, she had extreme difficulty getting it on and off.  I had it ready to assemble months ago, but she was very upset that in order to make it larger at the join, I had to cut some length off at the top.  So these last many months I have been trying to figure out how to add length.  

I looked at my fabric and mourned.  I don't have enough of the pink patterned stuff to make a longer skirt section.  Ikea no longer has this particular curtain.  I hemmed and hawed.  I thought and thought.  I decided a white underskirt was the way to go.  I planned on doing that all winter long, but for one little problem.  No.  Oddly enough, not time, though that was a factor in getting it done.  

The problem was the white cloth.  I had some of the right kind of cotton, but it was too narrow to make the longer skirt Cassie wanted.  It brely added 2 inches doing it the way I made the first skirts. Time came into play because I did not have time to really think how to get all the things I wanted out of this one narrower piece of cloth.  

First off, I was hoping for another full circle skirt.  That was part of why she loved it.  The fabric was just too narrow.  I thought perhaps by laying it to quarters and sewing them together, but nope.  Still did not get me what I wanted.  I laid and folded and figured and finally managed to get what I was looking for by making eight sections for the circle.  That gave me about 6 inches of white and that will make the longer skirt she liked.  

The skirt is assembled and I am sewing the very narrow hem on it to match the other skirt parts.  With my narrow little hem thing and my many seams, it isn't going so well s it did the first time.  I may yet be ordering more fancy rolled hem feet and making a wider hem.  I can probably use a greater variety of feet for my own sewing. 

It is going, but slowly, ever so slowly.     

Little Bits

I choose the shawl pattern I am working on because the cast on said 12 stitches.  Almost every other shawl in the entire book, Three Cornered and Long Shawls says something like cast on 346.  It's easy to do 12.

And you would think it would be boring just working across these few stitches, but it isn't.  there is a rhythm to each set of rows and each little section of the lace is complete almost before you think you have begun.  Knitting it is hypnotic.

It is the perfect evening knitting.  Not that I have done much evening knitting before, but right now, I am trying to sync myself with the rest of the world and have a bit of an evening.  I had been working on evenings before the babysitting came up.  Last fall, I was still doing household chores late in the day, things like dusting, but it is so nice to be able to have a knitting project so perfectly suited to my needs.

The repeat is 12 rows but it is so simple that it took no time at all to get it into my head.  The only trouble I have come up against is that I occasionally find myself knitting a pattern row on the plain row side.  It is a must for me to keep my stitch marker near the top of the work so it catches my eye  to tell me I am wrong. 

Great little pattern, great little yarn.  It makes for happy days.

A bit of Everything

Lest anyone think I only miss half my grand kids, I really should say that I had the same pang for my kiddies when I lived over in Spruce Grove and babysat my little boys every week when mom and dad were cleaning.  When my routine included them, there was a hole left once they didn't need me anymore and it took time to fill when the babysitting was done. There is always a pang in my heart when routine doesn't include my kiddies.

Yesterday was odd.  I couldn't start anything big or intense because I was waiting for a call to pick up the landlord from work. He traded in his two cars, including his spiffy and eminently collectible S2000,  on a new vehicle.  Both vehicles were standard which I do not drive, so my contribution to the event was bringing him home to take the other vehicle to town.  

While waiting for his call I spent time looking for some online fabric sources in Canada.  I know there are many stores out of the US, but I would rather find one here. I want to sew a few tops for summer and though I have a ton of fabric, I would really like them to be something more than plain black or green or blue.  I may have had my fill of plain.  I find myself really drawn to bold prints and bright colours so it may be that my summer tops are going to look like the shirts guys buy when they come home from a Hawaiian vacation.  There may be a little rayon or polyester, in direct opposition to my plan of natural fibre clothing.  For some garments, drape is a must.  It may be that I find prints and the drape I am looking for in cottons and linens.  We shall see.  

I also snatched enough time from internet rambling to finish these.  

Cassie asked for them a long time ago, and while it took some time to locate fabric, it has been a very long wait for her super hero panties.  It looks like a small bit of work, but one is a stretchy fabric and one is a woven. That disparity needed to be addressed before the appliques were applied. It isn't something I had done before and I wanted it to be sturdy and comfortable to wear.  With the babysitting, it just never got done.

And that little girl deserves to get these done  The last weekend she was here, she left a wee present for me around my computer screen.

Isn't that sweet?  That Gb is really a GD.  She told me she just got a bit mixed up and she tried to fix it before I found her.  

Today's job, is a bit of knitting and some sewing with a lot of handwork. I am going to sit down and watch The Favourite when I get to the hand work part.  Olivia Coleman is a wonderful actress.  She did a great job in The Rev and Broadchurch but one of the most interesting features of this movie is costuming.  Apparently, even in Britain, where they have deep stores of period clothing, there is very little available from the period of Queen Anne so the movie clothing was all designed and made from modern materials and made with a relatively small budget. I am so interested in seeing exactly what they came up with.   

There was knitting yesterday.  Lace edgings and summer tops were worked on and there will be an update later this week on both but for now, this is enough.   Time to be busy.  Isn't it grand?  !!

           

And so it goes

Suddenly it is done. As fast as it began, it is over.   The babysitting I was doing all winter long is over because mom's job is finished.  We all knew it was temp and we knew it was very very close to finished, but it feels just a bit odd now that it done.  I will miss playing with my kiddies every day, but I will not miss getting up early and hitting the road early in the morning, and I will not miss being away from home all day and I will not miss  not having my own routine. 

So I find myself sitting here wondering how to proceed.Which task of all the things I wanted to accomplish this winter do I want to start with?  

I ended up taking along the Einband to my retreat and I started work on an Icelandic shawl, Dyrfinnustadhyrna med blundu by Sigridur Halldorsdottir from the Lovely book, Three Cornered and Long Shawls.  It took a bit of thinking and debating to choose one, but I started this one because though I want to knit them all, this one started with a cast on of 12 stitches.  In a large group of people and lots of conversation, 12 stitches was easily done.  

I didn't get huge swaths done, but I did a lot of looking before beginning,and a lot of chatting.  Probably too much chatting.  Oh how I love to knit with this yarn.

And then when I returned from the retret, it was to find this.  

 

The very large cone of  UKI 3/2 Astra to  Knit with the three partial cones I picked up while on my epic adventure last summer.  I'm going to save this knitting for the heat of high summer.

te rest of today's adventures are yet to be determined, but will include varying amounts of unpacking, laundry, and doing dishes (Yes, I was away but the landlord saved me the dishes.  It's okay though.  I think he has the flu or at least a bad cold.)  Generic mundane household tasks.  In my house.  All day.  Which is just fine.

Going to miss seeing Cassie and Marcus everyday though. No getting round that.

What to Take

My big knitting job for today is deciding what to take.  It is the weekend of our last Strawberry Creek retreat.   

First decision for this year, is no spinning.  If I spun today it would be tense and tight and wouldn't be at all what I would like.  So no spinning till the babysitting is done, hopefully next week.  I am also not taking my usual swath of books for people to look at.  I have no interesting new books this year where last year I had a bunch.  

I know I am going to take the sweater I'm currently working on but I would also like to take a little something else.  Which little something else is where the tough choices come in. 

I thought about taking a WIP.  The lace on my Bridgewater shawl awaits and would be interesting to knit, but I don't want to knit something so fine right now.  There really aren't any other ongoing projects that I would want to take.

Which leaves me to new things.  I can always start new things, I suppose.  I do have those projects that I sorted out to start after the babysitting was done.  It may well end up being one of these, but there are so many other things so the debate rages on.  

The criteria for knitting while away like this is easy. It has to be something relatively mindless.  I haven't seen people for months and I hope for many good conversations about yarny things.  I need to be able to listen and pay attention to other things while my hands move.  Garter stitch would be good. A Martina Behm pattern perhaps? A nice big cozy hap shawl for knitting through summer on chilly days.  (There will be chilly days, right?) Or simple stockinette in the round, like a sock. But not socks! 

I intend to spend some time standing staring at the yarn closet and the display cabinet before I leave. It's a good thing the retreat has no tight timelines.  If I am a little late, well, they know why.  I was overwhelmed by the lovely choices on offer right here in my own lovely store.      

The thin grey line

And here you have it:  the thin grey line.

The colour play is over until such time as I run out of the grey.  Or almost run out.  Still reserving a little for the sleeves.

The biggest part of the knitting comes now.  The interesting increases that give this garment its distinctive shape, means there will be a lot of stitches on the needles before I am through.  A lot.  It happens fast too because the increases are every other row.  Fast.  It creates an flare to the side.  I haven't read farther in the pattern but I know I have to knit eleven inches following just what I am doing now. 

So if you need me, that is where I will be for most of today.  Knitting inches. 

It's a Colourful Life

Colour is such a big part of life.  It adds character and depth to everything we are and do. Feeling blue?  Get thee to a greenhouse and walk among all the green.  Look for the flowers.  A world with flowers isn't  all bad.

It certainly plays into my time with the kids.  This morning Marcus is teaching me how important It is in life to not worry about colouring inside the lines and how rainbow pups are just as important as pretty as regular pups .

  

Colour outside the lines.  That is what I wish for you today.