No matter how many sweaters I knit, when I near the end of the body, I am always a wee bit surprised. It's such a big piece of work completed.
I am onto the last part of the rolled edging I wanted to do. I made one tiny mistake. I should have knit one stockinette row in green so the when I switched to the reverse stockinette portion, I would have had green bumps. The way it is, the sneaky bit of colour is less hidden than I hoped. Oh well. It isn't enough to bug me to reknit the row. I will remember that detail for the rest of the rolled edges.
There still are sleeves to knit, 3/4 sleeves mind you. Each sleeve should be a day of work, but I will be wearing this very soon.
I am a tiny bit sluggish this morning. I had an early a.m. meeting and it totally discombobulated my day. However, I am thrilled to show you this.
I am down to about 10 rows before I join the bottom of the pocket. At some point I need to measure for length and do some short rows on the back side to make the whole back longer. It won't be anything dramatically longer, just a nice long slope and an extra bit to cover off the ever present chill.
Among the questions and revelations that I have come across the last while, there is also this. Last fall and winter the ever present chill was not so ever present. It seemed to have lessened somewhat and I thought bravo, my medication was working. This summer and particularly this fall, the chill is back. I am constantly chilly. So back to the drawing board and maybe a change in meds. Sigh.
I got a giant parcel the other day from the fabric store. It was large because I ordered a proper cushion for my chair and some other reupholstery supplies. While I was getting the things I needed for that work, I decided to take a look at the fabrics I had been avoiding that. I really have enough of that already but...well...there is always that thing you do not have.
This is the time of year when the buy 1 get 2 free wall can be a bit bare, so I was looking at a filter they called shirting. It is everything that will make perfect shirts right down to a men's dress shirt. It isn't only for guys, as the little bees kids fabric attested to and this time I found some more buffalo plaids.
I love plaids, I always have but Brian wasn't a plaid person, or a print person and somewhere, subconsciously, I tended to avoid what he did not like. Silly me. They had some plaids there with a really great price on them, so I got one of my personal favourites, red and black.
I bought it thinking of shirts but you know what? Maybe a dress. Wouldn't this be the most wonderful plain dress? I think so and as I folded the fabric after giving it a wash, just fell in love with the idea. Warmth and the ultimate comfort and ease.
Then I changed the filter to filter for colour and looked only for pink fabrics. I found a really lovely piece of double gauze in a nice quiet but very pastel pink.
If Cassie isn't game for it, then I guess I will be going pastel for at least one shirt. Or maybe, just maybe, heaven willing, something for a baby coming in January.
And then I spotted it. in pink. So not my usual but it was exactly what I had been looking for for months. Jess from Muna and Broad talked about a favourite pair of pants made in a pink fine wale courduroy and that took me into thinking about corduroy in general. I know people make fun of it but a fine whale is lovely and warm and I am all about the warm. The pink is a bit of a departure, but Cassie might like this pink for a dress/jumper/pinafore she liked. For me, this says shirt that lives it's life as a jacket.
I put the pink double gauze alongside so you could see its proper colour, a lovely warm rose rather than a pink. I ordered a lot so no matter what Cassie wants to make and what I want to make there is lots of fabric to do it. All in a bundle, it must weigh ten pounds. It is heavy and warm and I think I am really going to enjoy whatever it becomes.
I am trying to not go the the fabric store. Looking online might be more dangerous than live shopping ever was because live, you are a bit limited by what you can carry to the cutting table while still leaving room for the cutting person to cut. I don't have to carry it here, not even from the post office. I have a saint for a roommate.
I ought to be ready for sewing again next week. There has been some other new to do stuff going on around here and I needed to get that established before I did anything else. But summer is done and fall is here and warm things are on my mind.
And specially for anyone who needs and wants to learn about stepping out of our comfort zone, I present Pink, who is layers and layers and layers, but no matter what layer you listen to, it is something special.
That old children's story, Piggy in the Puddle has been running through my head for the last few days. Everything I am knitting is in the middle. And I do mean everything. Looking at my Ravelry projects page, it isn't absolutely true. There are quite a few things that are just started, and one thing that is almost done, but most of the things are in the middle. Even my socks, all 9 pairs of them are middle, some on the first sock, some on the second but in a middle.
It could get me down but I don't really mind middles. Middles are where the cool things really start to show. Middles are where a project starts displaying itself in its glory. Like this.
The inside of the pocket is just long enough to show the flash of colour that I was hoping for.
Today, middles are pretty great. Today middles are inspiring. Today middles are very satisfying.
I changed the sheets on my bed yesterday. It's a completely insignificant thing in the big scheme of things but I am writing about it today because yesterday was the day I put on the full winter bedding.
My full winter bedding goes like this: sheet, wool blanket, cotton quilt, wool filled comforter and it was the blanket that I added to the mix yesterday. Putting on that last bit of bedding helps to sort out stuff with no place to go in my room, ie, the wool blanket in it's storage bag is no longer just taking up a corner, it is actively doing its job. One less disaster corner.
But the best part is a secret only known to those of us who use a wool blanket on their beds. A blanket provides a whole different level of warm.
Comforters are great, do not get me wrong on that. I made mine a few years ago and made a second one for my guest room and I love them and I am gradually changing over everyone else's mind about heavy thick wool comforters, one child at a time. A comforter lays over you, capturing all your body warmth and holding it like a coccoon around you, protecting you from the chill of the night. The air space it holds around you it its superpower.
But a blanket is different. A wool blanket is flexible and its magic is that it drapes close to you, tucking right alongside you, connecting you directly to warmth and coziness. It's a direct pathway to ultra warm. Perhaps its superpower is that a soft woollen blanket, tucked close is the underwear of the blanket world..
And just like the long johns of my childhood, having this last layer on my bed means I am ready for what comes.
As I lay there, not hot, just incredibly cozy and cradled, I thought of mom and dad and winters in the house before dad fixed the central heating, and how my nose would stick out just above my layers of blankets, and it would breath in the chilly air, but everything below my nose was quite contentedly warm. I felt surrounded by safety and comfort, just as if mom and dad were just next door and would save me no matter what was in my dreams.
It was very hard getting out of bed this morning. Incredibly hard. And if I am honest, I am looking forward to getting back into it tonite.
My blanket was one of my presents to myself from the PEI portion Epic adventure. It was supposed to be for on the guest bed but I need it more. Blankets are still available for an extremely reasonable price from that same source, MacAusland's Woolen Mill and in this time of people looking for ways to cut costs, turn down your heating just a bit and turn up your wool power.
I have been knitting sections with this small bit of yarn for three days last week, and over the whole weekend. There is abundant progress on the length of the sweater, but this ball of yarn is not shrinking. At least half of the sweater is complete and that bit? That bit is still the first ball.
There is also a problem with the mohair.
The mohair isn't shrinking either. It's just sitting there, sticking to itself enough that you have to give it a really good yank when you pull some out to work with. There is only one ball of this.
I know how it goes though. One minute, I have tons of yarn. I have acres and could almost make a second sweater. Snd then, blammo. I will look up ten feet from the last bit of bound off edging and \I will end up short.
Lots of yarn? Sure. I know how this goes. It's laughing at me.
This morning I feel as if I need some relief. I think I know what it is from but that is for later in thinking time and thinking time is just another word for knitting time.
I pulled this out yesterday afternoon.
I wish you could see the true colour. It is just so incredibly lovely. It is also hard to knit. There are only four rows of mohair in a set but each stitch needs taking care of so that i can be sure to catch it. It is not a speed knit.
There are times though, when this slow knitting feels absolutely right.
I am finding the passing of the queen much more of a personal loss than I ever imagined it could be. She is so far away and other than a figure head, she played little in the day to day world I live in. And yet, I feel such loss. I find I have to stay away from news because so much of the "news" is an individual who is no more connected to her than I am, opining on some small imagined slight by someone or other to someone or other. There are body language so called 'experts' who make pronunciations on things that were decided years ago. It angers me. Leave these people alone. They just suffered a huge personal loss and they deserve better from us. She gave us her all, her everything, and maybe just maybe in the interest of human decency, we should allow them to grieve. No family is without division, no family is without strains and stresses and no one wants the whole world looking in and commenting on it. So leave them alone to grieve.
What will happen can happen down the road. Will that family heal their wounds? Maybe? Will we love King Charles as we loved his mum? Maybe. Will we let the little ones of the family be children? I sure hope so. But for now, let them grieve.
As you can tell, writing in the evening is not working very well. I didn't even think of it at all, which is not what I wanted to happen at all. So mornings it shall be. I shall attempt to not jabber quite so much.**
I have been working on the green sweater most of the time, but I keep coming back to this one. It needs the neckline fixed. I just can't get used to the close fit. It always feels like it is pulling up. So...
The plan is to snip away along the marker line and knit short little ribbing to match the sleeves and the bottom of the sweater.
Once the neckline repair is completed, I will rip off the bottom ribbing at the bottom, and I am going to knit till the original balls of yarn are gone.
Don't get me wrong. I love how this sweater looks with its cropped length. I even love how it looks on me. It is really cute with wide legged pants like my Glebe Pants from Muna and Broad. It would look really sweet, dressy even with a pair like the Winslow Culottes from Helen's Closet.
But a sweater that only looks great without keeping ones forever chilly feeling lower back covered, well, that is just sad in a handknit. It is a lot of stitches around the bottom of it. I didn't write down the needle size but the gauge is 24 stitches, pretty standard for a sport weight. I think the needles size I used would have been 3.5 mm. I did debate about making it longer. The notes on the project page and probably on blog too, will tell me that I was just bored with the bottom of it.
So here we go. It isn't a lot for a whole days work, but as much as I tried to do the intarsia in the round the way I read about it long ago, I am left to go back and forth, so back and forth I go.
Not that it matters much. I don't mind purling and my purl speed is almost as fast as my knit speed. It's just that I had really hoped to keep knitting in the round.
There wasn't a whole lot of knitting over the weekend. There was birthday party driving to do and partying and strangely when you added that up to F1 race hours, there wasn't a lot of time left. Well, and then there was napping. Besides, the sweater is at a bit of an awkward stage.
It was time to start the outer part of the simple pocket/pouch for the front. It looks a lot like a sock at the moment with a giant wing off one side. A giant green worsted sock. The idea does have merit but sweaters first.
As I wrote last week, I have been thinking about colour for the inside of this pocket. The debating is over. The inside of this pocket will be rust. It has nothing to do with possibly being short of yarn. I already know I will have plenty. Its about the spirit of the thing, the soul of it and indeed, the heart of me.
This also means that there might be the smallest bit of colourplay going on at the welts (edges) and that means something a wee bit different than just the usual ribbing for them. I was leaning to making an i-cord edge, but colour opportunities are limited, all or none. I don't want the colour to be in your face so I think what I will do is a rolled edge.
I have used it before on a few different garments. I will knit five or six rows of reverse stockinette when it is time to do the edging, then the same number of stockinette rows and then the reverse stockinette and finally a nice section of stockinette that will roll to form the final edge. That middle row of stockinette bits kind of bows back and will be a nice little hiding place for a pop of colour that is only visible sometimes. That sneaky bit of colour is exactly what I want for this otherwise plain sweater.
The front pocket part is almost long enough. It is a guess at this point. The bottom of the pocket part does not have to be down to the bottom edge of the sweater. I think it is more desirable if it doesn't. The intention is not to use it as a pocket so much as to use to to warm up my hands when they are chilly or tired or need a break from knitting. If it gets too long, it becomes less snuggly for hugging hands.
My task for today is to learn how to properly intarsia in the round. I know it can be done. I have seen it done. I understand the principle trick of it but now I must learn to DO it.
PS. I am still trying to write in the evenings versus mornings. It's a bit of a struggle but I do hope to get there. Bottom line, I am back and writing feels good again. Might make no sense at all, but it feels good.
Thursday, 8 September 2022
The Queen died today.
She is a far world away from most things in Canada but her face is on our money, her speech plays at Christmas and all our laws rules regulations and legal things are in her name. She is intrinsically bound in our nationhood.
But there is so much more.
After Brian died, one of the things I found hardest of all, was figuring out a new framework to my life. Feeling comfortable with it took a long, long time. For me, in a lot of ways, the Queen is one of those societal frames that is part of how I see my country and me in it. She is like the backup plan if things are not working out.
Technically, of course, she wasn't, but it felt like she was. And now she is gone.
One of the wonders of the Monarchy is that it will move on seamlessly, and we have a new king and a new person backing up everything we are.
But she has always been my queen and I am going to miss her.
I did not do a whole lot today. I wanted to go have another bit of a dig in my stash, but Keith was working from home today. It was unexpected so I had to find something else to do.
So I knit. I hoped to knit inches and inches, but the change in weather has hit my poor knuckles hard and my hands just are not able to knit the whole day away. I got away from wearing my wrist warmers overnight in the heat of the summer, but the last few nights, I have been wearing them and keep dreaming that they had fingers. My hands feel so much better when they are surrounded by warmth.
So I did some knitting today, and that will be what it is. About an inch and a half I think. You can see my marker to keep track of my pace just below the tips of the needles.
I had hoped to get to skein two today but, tomorrow will have to do. Not a huge amount left but at least three rows, maybe four.
I was wanting to dig in my stash because I was thinking of silk. I have several cones of pure silk, one in a really gorgeous cream colour and the other a brilliant red. They are both the raw looking nubby silk that I prefer. I saw a pattern that I think would look really good in the silk. It was just a simple top down, with rows of eyelets every ten or twelve rows. It was the kind of thing that really would let a nubby silk look its best.
Somewhere deep in there is a flax and silk blend in cream as well. I saw it last time I did a deep dig and for the life of me I can't remember why I didn't keep it out. I think I want a simple over top made out of that. Something a bit like the Box Tops I have sewn from Munda and Broad or the Blanche I made couple winters ago.
I am not sure why I am thinking of summer tops or tops that would be for under sweaters in winter. I am cold. It's chilly out and I am so looking forward to wearing all my winter sweaters again. I love my sweaters. Maybe that now that sweater weather has arrived, I don't want to face it? Buck up old thing.
Well, if I am dreaming of silk, it's okay. Silk is one of the warmest fibres there is, or so they say. I can take it. Besides, realistically, it is going to take till at least Christmas till there is room for silk in the WIP bin.
I need speedy warm sweaters. I need some socks. Those have to come first.
Yesterday was changing the sheets day. It isn't a big job and is done at least every second week and now that I have sheets that stay on the bed, I don't even hate it. This week, it was special because it was the day to put the big blankets on.
I made a wool filled comforter a few years ago for my bed and I made another for my guest bed. The boys finally appreciate Grandmas heavy warm blanket but for myself, I have loved it since the day it was completed.
If you have never slept under a wool filed comforter, I feel sorry for you. It is not for hot places, but here where it gets a bit cold long before the furnace goes on in the fall, a wool filled comforter is beyond pleasure right to that place where words don't matter.
You pull it up to your nose and you are suffused with instant warmth. It dispels any sense of chill leaves you only comfort. And I have one more layer, a wool blanket, to add when it turns really cold.
I slept so deeply last night. I have pulled the comforter up a few times last week, but each time, once my sheets warmed it had to be tossed off if I hoped to sleep any more that night. But last night, I just slept. From 9 till 3 I slept soundly and then again from 4 till 7. I feel like I rested in ways I did not realize I wasn't resting.
The little bit cooler weather is making the days better too. From head to toe, I feel like a survivor. That had trade offs. My feet felt good but my knees and my wrists and even my ears ached instead. You can't have everything.
All in all a good day. I knit, I did a big bunch of laundry, I napped, I read a book. Yup a good kind of day, capped off by getting to snuggle in my warm cozy woolen nest again.
I have found that I really like sewing in the a.m. and after the sewing is caught up, there is spinning and weaving too. These all will have to be morning things, because, increasingly, my ability to focus in the evenings is just gone. I have wobbly vision as in the letters you see at the doctors on your vision charts, do not stay in a line for me. The bob and weave and wave. All day, the muscles that help focus work hard to keep things crisp and clear and they are tired at the end of the day and just can't do it anymore. The older I get, the worse it gets so managing my day properly will help me get some things done. A few months ago, I hoped to spin in the evenings but I found that just has not been as easy as I had hoped. So, I am going to write the blog and that is all that there is to it. The computer will always let me adapt to larger and larger type so there you go. Evening blogs are going to mean some weirdness will creep in. I don't have the vision to edit well, so that may have to wait for mornings. It also means that I have to write Sunday evenings and that is going to take a real effort. Not so natural as writing in the mornings but the best use of my time. Wish me luck.
So when last I popped in here, I had just cast on for a workmanlike sweater, a good old fashioned plain sweater, and in the end, Friday was given to knitting it. It just felt right to keep it going. I kept on all through the weekend, betraying my F1 blanket in a big way. But sweaters are needed more fiercely than a gift blanket. And I knit all through the weekend and here, at the end of it all, I feel ery good about it.
We have the yoke complete. In my head, this means that 1/3 of the sweater is done. It's coming along nicely.
Now the next big thing for this sweater is the pouch. I have a pouch on this sweater. but I found that it was just a bit narrow. I want this one to be wider by tow to three inches. Otherwise, I am going to follow what I did for it on this new sweater.
As late as last week I was making a plan for what if I ran out of green yarn. I only have 3 skeins of this colour and while that ought to be lots, I worry. It is what I do. I had a backup of some rusty red and the closer I get to the pocket knitting, the more I am very seriously thinking that the inner pocket will be that rusty yarn. Wouldn't that look neat with just bits popping out at the edges of the pockets? It would involve a bit of intarisa knitting, but that isn't really a problem. I planned to learn that skill before and maybe now is when I do it.
The closer I get to this point the less likely it is that I will need a backup. I am done the top and have about a quarter of the first skein remaining. No way will I use more than half a ball to knit the sleeves (3/4Sleeves) o there is lots to get the sweater as long as I want.
All of that is down the road a day or two. Now it is time to shut down for the evening and to put of some blurry Poirot to watch as I fall asleep under my cozy blankets.
Yes. It is nice and cool over nights now. Blessedly so and it won't be long till that first fronst comes calling. Sweater weather is here on the wide prairie.
it is an F1 race weekend so I am going to post quickly this evening.
I got some mail that has been a while coming. I think it took a while because I ordered some fold over elastic. I wanted to see what the fuss was about and I suspect demand outstripped the supply.
I ordered a piece of fabric to replace the one Cassie used. I was able to get the same fabric, a light airy gauze cotton with an ikat like woven design all over the fabric.
I am so happy to have this.
I also ordered some knit fabric. It isn't fancy, but the one thing I have had trouble figuring out in online purchasing is knits. It is so hard to tell if what I am looking at is really what I need. I haven't had nearly enough practise with knits to be able to judge. Cassie said the next thing she wanted to sew was a t shirt and I got worried.
Is the farbic too thin? Too ribbed? To light weight? Does it stretch right? And because ribs are popular, they are pricey. I hate the idea of wasting an expensive fabric by using it for the wrong thing.
I bought a piece of fabric that will be enough to use for a shirt if she wants but that I can use for all sorts of things if it isn't what she wants to sew.
Twenty five bucks of really plain stuff, but it is what I was looking for and will have all kinds of uses if she turns it down.
And then a couple pieces of good solid flannelette for some around the household goods. I love plaids and even more for this purpose, I love flannelette. Cozy is as cozy does.
I made another order for fabrics today. If Cassie decides to sew something different than the t shirt, I want her to have a bit better choice of fabrics. She was appalled that I didn't have any pink fabrics in my stash of fabric so I thought I ought to sort that out. I ordered a lively soft rose pink double gauze cotton. There will be enough to make her a dress or myself a shirt. Either way, it is pink.
And then inspired by the master of Pink, Jess from Broad in the Seams and Muna and Broad, and bought some very fine soft stretch courduroy. Jess's wardrobe works around some gorgeous pink pants but mine pink will be a shirt. I have enough of this coming that even if Cassie falls in love with it, there will be plenty for my shirt. If it isn't to her liking, I see two different shirts in my future and that would be really wonderful.
And now I must get to bed because wakeup for the first part of the F1 show is on early in the morning and what with Keith buying the F1 streaming service, I really want to use it to its full advantage. It just adds to the fun!
So that is it for me. I do hope to get to some of the sewing tomorrow, but depending on the way the day goes, I might just keep on with knitting the sweater and deal with sewing next week. Only time will tell. Either way, its an F1 weekend and that makes me happy.
I did a bit of digging yesterday. In the stash of course. It is routinely delightful but this time I was also on a mission.
I have to fix this sweater.
It is my version of Ysolda Teague's Threipmuir. I knit the first part of the colourwork too firmly and it just does not want to rest and relax after several blockings the same way as the rest of the sweater. It feels like it pulls up at the neck and I feel chokey. I don't wear it because of that. But I love the fabric the yarn has made. Seriously love and would shout to the moon for the beauty of Brigg's and Little Sport till the cows all come home and beyond into the darkest night. I had the best part of two balls left after finishing the sweater so my mission was to find them.
Mission accomplished.
I also took the opportunity to pull out some yarns to make more of what I call my work sweaters. In long ago prairie parlance you would have called them your everyday sweaters, versus those that are just a bit fancier which we would have called our school sweaters or going to town things and then of course our Sunday clothes. Those were the various levels of clothes in my childhood. In my working days, I had painting clothes and work clothes. I shamefully wore the painting clothes much much on lazy weekends. PJs are a much nicer thing to wear, and the best of all is the summer dress class of clothes, trust me.
First thing I came up with was some deep rich green heathered Cascade Eco +. That was the first thing I cast on.
In the daylight here, it doesn't look rich or very green, but it is. I cast on for a simple raglan sweater, 3/4 sleeves and a hand pouch to warm chilly winter fingers after the knitting is done for the day. I have three skeins for it and because I am planning for a fairly wide pouch, may have to pull out an emergency skein in a deep rust from long ago to do the inside of the pocket. Time will tell, but a workhorse type sweater is always a good thing.
I also pulled out some yarn for a wee treat for me. I love watching the Cozy Up Knits podcast. They make me laugh and they have the best coffee cups. Really, just the best. But mostly they just make me laugh at the silly sister hijinks.
They have a pattern that came out late spring for a Broiche Hug and I loved it from the moment I first saw it. A very long time ago. Not that I am bitter but I waited for them to make it a pattern for a good long while, and here it is. I knew exactly what yarns I wanted for it for a two colour version.
They are different yarns, one being pure alpaca and the other being a very soft drapey wool, rayon and silk blend but both are so soft that I hope it works. If not, no biggie and I will have enjoyed trying with these. The pattern is such a nice shape that I can see me knitting more than one of these.
And then there is that whole looming winter thing. It isn't here yet. The last two weeks have been hot, very dry and just about as perfect fall harvesting weather as any farmer could have ever dreamed of having, but the kids are back in school, I bought a new pack of pens and some paper. It is also dark at 5 a.m. and that means cool days are coming. As hot as it has been, I felt chilly. I needed winter sweater wool.
I bought a bunch of Atlantic on my Epic Journey a few years ago from the Brigg's and Little factory store. I have 8 skeins of white and seven skeins of various shades of grey, basically two sweaters worth. My original thoughts were to knit a heavy over sweater with colourwork with the darkest grey at the bottom and the lightest at the top and white as the main colour, but I don't know. Layers works too and Muna and Broad has a seriously great patterns for coats and jackets. I could sew one if I really feel the need and find a fabric that I fall in love with. I am not sure what sweater or sweaters this yarn will become, but it, they, are going to be lovely and warm.
Maybe with deep pockets and shawl collars and a double breasted style front. Extra layers for extra warmth. I must be feeling chilly right now.
Anyway, I have frittered away my morning. I have a few chores today, generally involving the washing machine, but am otherwise just going to knit my heart out.
