On to a plain back

I am so glad to be done the giant M.  

I may have knitted just a row or two too long to do it, but I really wanted to get done.  In the end, I put the yarn and project away so that I wouldn't sneak in a row or two each time I sat for a minute.  That had been happening all day in between laundry.

I would kind of like to finish the sweater by Sunday evening because Cassie is coming to do some sewing this weekend, and it would be nice to send the sweater home for Marcus.  I started the back this morning and have made decent progress but I am taking it slower today and I won't allow myself to get so focussed on it that hours go by without me realizing it.

Today is a nice cool day so I am doing housework and maybe a wee bit of baking.  It may be a good day to make some sticky buns or cinnamon rolls or  my moms ever so tasty special combination of the two.  

Large Intarsia M s

I  loathe  intarsia.

All those strings.

But I do like the look of it.  

By the end of my knitting day, it was much farther along.  

And that was it for the day.  I am pleased...but I still hate intarsia.

Woah.

I have been sewing on and off for about 45 years.  I started sewing in 4 H as a kid and I have always understood the general principles of how to put stuff together.  But I have never tried to sort it out myself.

I wanted to add a wee bit of a collar to the Ashton Top I was making for with my yellow York Pinafore and searched how to draft a collar and away I went.  

And voila, a collar.   

It's not perfect and the sewing is my usual work, but I am thrilled.  

I drafted my own collar pattern and it fit the designers pattern perfectly with no adjustments. Woah.

Sleeves tomorrow.

Step One

And so the M begins.

There is going to be some messing with the yarn balls and some time spent untangling but it looks pretty good so far.  It is only the bare beginning though.

Still step one is a most important step.

The M

Now that I started Marcus sweater, it was time to sit down and sort out his 'M'.  He wanted it to go all the way from the top to the bottom.  Giant was the word he used.  Grandma wanted it to look nice.  They are competing desires in a way.  Still it is what he wants and I have the power to do it.

I pulled out the knitting graph paper and started playing around. 

The first try was not quite giant.  I like the shape and the scale of it, so I tried again.  This time I calculated the stitches in a more mathy way and came up with this.

It looks just about right.  Proof will be in the knitting.

Sweet Relief

More rain please?  It was much nicer today.  The skies were a bit clearer but the haze was enough as was the heat that the windows stayed closed.  About 8 pm a very light short rain cooled the air and made things much better.  But we need so much more rain.  We have a sump pump in the basement because the house is built on a bit of a spring.  Normally, this time of year means the sump runs at least once every two hours day and night.  It might run once a day this year.  That is how very dry it is here.  

I kept my spirits up by hitting the sewing room this morning. First task of the day was to make the bias binding.  I did it the old fashioned way and though every one online says the continuous strip is faster and less hassle, I found it much much quicker to do it in strips.  It also gave me a chance to use some parts of the fabric that couldn't be used well with the continuous loop but worked really well for the old fashioned way of doing it.  

About an hour and a half after starting, cutting, pinning, sewing and ironing, I was done.  it took a healthy three hours the other way. Old fashioned girl that I am, I will stick with the strip method.

And here we are, the first bias strip section on the pinafore.  You can see now why this is the perfect match.

The other benefit of doing the bias strip this way is that I now have enough fabric for a tank top, likely an Ashton top.  I already have plenty of bias binding!

This afternoon, I sat down and decide it was time to start Marcus sweater.  He wants it yellow with a great big M on the front, one that goes all the way from the bottom to the top.  

It's a start.  I found it a bit harder to knit today.  My hands tired out quickly so I would knit for a bit and then put it down and then pick it up a while later. It's just the way it is right now and I will take it over not knitting at all.

As I was preparing to start the yellow sweater, I came across this in a box of patterns.  I made t big so you can clearly see.

For many many years, the farm papers and farm women's magazines sold a selection of dress patterns, quilt patterns, doilies patterns knitting patterns and the like.  The selection changed weekly but if you couldn't get to a store, it was a great way to get up to date fashion patterns.  My mother in law ordered these sometime in September of 1943.  The patterns inside are crocheted doilies.  Dorothy made these patterns several time over the years.  She had them on several tables in her home.  

I am typing slowly tonight because I am sitting in front of my open window breathing in the cool fresh clean air.  That is just about the best thing in the world.  Well besides baby giggles and kids kisses. 

PS, hail not so much, but I will take it.  It is moisture after all and every millimeter will help.

Keeping Busy

The grey smoke continues.  When the sun shines, it looks very very orange.  Please pray for rain.  

When last we saw my mini quilt, it looked like this.  When I got up this morning, it was the first thing I picked up to work on.

I finished up the edges before my first coffee was done.

I am really pleased with it.  

Next up was to work on the trim for the sheets and the pillow cases.  I planned to do a wee crochet edging and quickly proved to myself that sewing it on was going to be easier. It took a good hour to figure out that the top lace in the photo was going to be much for the scale of the work.  I would have needed to purchase some very fine thread and I really wanted to do this without having to buy anything more.

After an hour I had a length of foundation chains and row one complete for one pillow case.  This is when I decided that when I work up the crocheted blanket for this room, I am going to be using two plys of the crochet thread.

Crocheting very fine thread reminded me of very long ago when I was learning to crochet and decided that I was never going to work in size 30 crochet cotton again.  One painful doily was enough.  Only size 20 or thicker for me. Scale wise, doing a very simple row of chain three loops and a single crochet over two stitches was right.

I might do two rows on the sheets but for the pillow case, just one row of tiny loops looked just right.  I pinned out the loops and starched them before I sewed the trim to the pillow case and oddly, the trim yellowed a bit.

It will have to be okay because I am not going to do it again.  There is plenty more of the edging yet to do.

First thing tomorrow, I am going to work on it again.  I can't wait to see it all put together and the bed back in the wee bedroom.

As I was looking for a few things I came across an artifact in my sewing things.  

Floss bobbins from Woolco, precursor to Walmart costing 77 cents.  These bobbins are well over twenty five years old. Definitely vintage.  They do not cost that now.  I had to laugh.  I opened the package and tucked them in with the other empty bobbins in my floss cases and as I did so, the very dried up rubber band cracked and fell out in dry little pieces. 

And then, at the end of the day, I sat and knit and just had a lovely evening.   

It could have been a Stinker of a Day.

If I am going to be completely honest with the world, I am feeling a little bit down in a way that I haven't felt since I started taking medication for anxiety and mild depression.  It is the days of smoke.  A human's natural instinct to the smell of heavy smoke coming from an undetermined source is to run, only there is no where to run.  It was pretty bad yesterday with smoke getting heavier as the day went on.  Once I understood that it was all connected to the smoke from fires far, far away, I could start to deal with it.

I got busy.  I decided to sit down and sew together the York Pinafore that I cut out before my company came to visit.   

It went very well and my little pattern hack worked really nicely.  I will make the hacked centre back pleat wider on the next one, but it worked.

 So it is finished for now.  The next thing to do is the bias tape to finish the neck and sleeve openings but first I have to make the bias tape.  I wasn't sure what fabric I was going to use for bias tape but as I was cutting out the pinafore, it came to me.

I bought this fabric earlier this season to make a summery light top and it matches perfectly with the fabric I am using for the pinafore.  (See the first photo on this post.  Note that the colours are stronger and clearer in real life).  

I want to make an Ashton Top, another pattern from Helen's Closet, using the tops sleeve expansion pack.

I am going to make version one, but since the top doesn't have a collar, I am going to have to hack one.  I can do it.  YES I can. And if Not, the simple original neckline will do. With the leftovers from this bright, cute plaid, I am going to make the bias tape for the pinafore. It's a lot more work than making a shaped facing, but it is well worth it.

In the evening I sat down and finally finished the quilting on the quilt for the mini house.  I really like the way it is coming along.

The whole process took much longer than I thought it would, but the results are good. The scale feels right for the room.  I have no need to rush with little things.  I have been thinking about doing them for decades. There is still the edge binding to do, but I don't expect that to take very long.  

It may have taken some work but I am glad I made the effort to turn a stinker of a day into a good one.  

Mail Day

What a lovely day it was.  It was mail day.  

My extra skein of Kelp Forest arrived from Midknit Cravings .  

It isn't a perfect match.  I did NOT expect it to be, dyed over a year later as it is.  It is a bit more of the lighter shades of the green tonal and a bit less of the dark, but the tones of the greens match exactly.  A bit of careful yarn management will blend it all perfectly.  

The real yarny surprise is this.  I ordered this rich deep navy from Yarn Canada on Monday.  This is Thursday and I am just wowed by the speed.

This is of course the yarn for Marcus' sweater.  He changed his mind from orange and solidly said blue so his M will be blue.  And while I was ordering, particularly with the cost of shipping things these days, I ordered some more Kroy because Kroy is always a good filler on an order as well as being a good sock yarn.

My fabric order also arrived.  I wasn't going to order any more fabric at all, but the linen in the top shot was 40% less than the regular price.  I needed it like a hole in the head but oh, how I wanted it.

The other thing I ordered was some waffle weave.  I wanted to make some decent fitting long johns for winter warmth for several years now.  I really wanted waffle weave because it is stretchy and comfortable to wear.  I have been looking for a plain cotton weave, but I have looked and looked and it doesn't seem to be on the market. 

 I had seen a blend like this bamboo and cotton waffle weave, several times on different fabric websites but the price was way out of my league.  Fabricville's short, online only 40% single day sale put it into my good heavens what an incredible price category of affordability.  I now have enough fabric for several pairs.

And I am not going to even go close to looking at Fabricville or ANY yarn place for a while.  I am going to sew and knit my heart out and just have a rollicking good time.  Honest.  Really.

A little weird for your day

My day is well under way, turning my guest room back into my sewing room after my guests have been.  Because I am thinking of sewing today and getting back to it after a three week break, I was reminded of something I did yesterday.  

Yesterday, I got up and got dressed.  I know.  This is something nearly every person does in the morning.  It isn't significant at all.  Usually a post about clothing is about the sewing of it but yesterday morning I wore a particular pair of pants.  

To give you a fair picture the significance of this pair of pants, my youngest son was two years old when we moved from the farm.  He is almost forty now.  

I bought this pair of pants not too long before we found out we were moving to Alberta from the farm.  Yes.  I have had these pants for about 38 years. They were stretchy and just seemed to keep stretching as I changed sizes.  They were never the sort of thing that I wore out of the house, so they were just for home.  They were one of the very very few old pieces of clothing in my wardrobe. 

They may have been see through when I wore them.  No one ever said, but generally I wore them with a longer t shirt or the last ten years, with a longer sweater. It wasn't something I worried about till very recently.  And even then, the lack of fibre remaining in the fabric wasn't the reason they were turfed.

They were turfed because they were slippery.  It seemed like every time I wore them, comfortable as they were, it felt as if I was slipping off the sofa or chair that I was sitting in.  They were comfortable standing in, but if you slide off your chair when you sit, that is a problem.  

So finally, yesterday, after 38 good years of service, I turfed a pair of pants.  No, they were not recyclable and they were not in any condition to pass on.  They were in that particular place my clothing seems to get to where in they are not really good enough to paint my house in but I was still wearing them anyways. 

Does this mean I get to sew another pair of pants?  Ha!

I was going to do that anyway.  I want to sew some Birchgrove Pants from Muna and Broad.  I love the Glebe pants I have sewn and I love the pencil pants I have made but I like the little bit dressier cut of the leg on Birchgrove.  

Sewing things that fit is almost as much fun as knitting.  Almost.  I will get ready for sewing this morning but I can knit all afternoon.

A mixed bag of things.

It has been a busy couple of days.  There was a ton of household chores and the occasional pop away from that to some really fun little things. 

 I managed to finish the wee 'pantry' items for my miniature house kitchen.  There is a huge '50 pound' bag of flour as well as a partial bag and a bag of oatmeal too.  I debated messing about with flour company logos, but decided just simple lettering was best.  Possibly the logos will show up at a later date, but this is good for today.

Then it was time to address the quilt top. I wanted to do some small something, a vine or an embroidered flower, but just a little something to take away the very plain whiteness of the white strips.   

 I ended up doing a small cross stitch at roughly even spaces across the surfaces and I am pleased with it as is.  

I was working at the quilting of the top layers and this happened.

I snapped the tip off.  That has not happened before in all my many years of embroidered things.  I think it is because of the layers of fabric.  There is a top, two layers of cotton fabric for batting and then a plain white fabric backing.  I think the layers are doing the job and it is beginning to look very quilt like.   

 I am finding it a bit stressful on my hands from the death grip I seem to be working with so I am not finishing it nearly as fast as I thought.  Still it looks just as I was hoping for.

But the knitting.  Ah the knitting.  There is just nothing that is not utterly perfect about the knitting.

I am getting a good amount done and I am really happy with the way it is coming together.  While this is a really nice thing, the best part of it is that it is just knitting.  It is hard to express just how good it feels to be knitting again.  I am still taking care but each day I do it a bit longer and watch carefully for any signs of stress on them.  I never work longer than fifteen minutes without a break to stretch and relax for a bit and it just feels good for my hands and for my spirit.

A wonderful weekend!

What a wonderful weekend.  It was one of those perfect sorts.

Since the last post, I managed to get the neck section and the pesto collar knit together 

and made it to the point where the shoulders are begun and the sleeve cap has started to be formed.

And that pretty much gives away that I did not go raglan with this sweater.  I decided to go contiguous.  I had been wearing my Griege sweater  for the last few weeks and the way I did the contiguous shourlders for it were just the perfect thing.  I decided to do the same for this sweater, a nice wide rib between shoulder increases.  Keep your fingers crossed that this one turns out as well.

Most of my time this weekend was being a very busy Grandma.  Carter came for a visit and he really wanted Marcus to come too, so Marcus came as well.  These two together are great friends and playmates.  They keep each other busy doing all kinds of shenanigans but when they are together, they never get in trouble.  They played outside at the park, they scootered, they went to the big park, they arranged a picnic in the shade for me.  The list goes on and a very wonderful time was had by all.

 

I forgot to catch Marcus having his nap in the morning, though you can see I did get evidence of Carter's supper time nap.  For you see these two stinkers decided to stay awake all night.  I went to bed long after they did and I swear to you, that room was silent before I even thought about laying down myself.  But they tricked me and proof of their staying awake, was the deep, deep sleeps they had at odd times.  

Carter later told me, he learned his lesson and he is never going to try that again.  He thought he could stay awake the whole day and he did pretty well for a long time, but after a day full of running, climbing and playing, he lost the game and he feel asleep mid mouthful of his supper.  We took his food away and he slept through his uncle putting him to bed and through till next morning at 8 a.m.   His total sleep was fifteen hours.  A champion sleeper!

It was a wonderful busy weekend full of love and happiness and silly bigger boys giggles and babies and little boys smiles.  Who could ask for more?

Knitting Work

See this container full of yarn?  I need to get three more bags of yarn into it.  It looks full so how do I intend to do it?

The yarn is almost all yarn from a long ago line closing windfall from Elann in Vancouver when Elann in Vancouver was still a thing. It was all yarn from a South African company called Elle. It was a sort of windfall of incredible pricing on an incredible mostly indigo dyed yarn for an unbelievably cheap price and that is why I have so much.  The yarn is mostly DK weight cottons, and is wound like this.

I mean to take the big cardboard spool from the center and make them into a slightly smaller ball like the one on the left. 

There were seven full bags that needed to be wound off and one partial bag to wind.

This is the pile of empty spools and this

is the mashed down remains of the plastic bags each ball was in plus labels and bags that each ten balls was in.  It's more plastic than I realized. It's about a third of the bin.

The winding took all morning, a good long morning.  I started at eight a.m. and worked till just after lunch but I did it all in one fell swoop.  And voila, it all fits.  

To be honest, I was worried because the visual space made by each new bag doesn't look that different from the original space used.  But it worked and I am pretty glad.

On the top you can see another lovely yellow yarn also from Elle, a cotton wool blend and beside it, a pure bamboo sourced rayon from the also now gone Naturally company.  Below these yarns, you can see the red cotton that I was trying to fit in beside the black cotton from the same line as the indgo and the red.   The black was previously wound off. The red was wound over the long non-knitting winter.

Now that that big job is done, I get to go do a wee bit of knitting preparation.  As I suspected, I did do a bit too much knitting the other day so I am taking it easy today.  I am planning and am getting everything together for a new yellow sweater requested by Marcus.  It has to be yellow **, with a big orange M on it.  It has meaning to him and who am I to wonder about it.  Orange and yellow it is. 

**No, not this yellow shown above.  I have some Berroco Vintage that will work great for Marcus.  He needs a good sturdy washable easy care yarn. The wool and cotton above is mine, all mine. 

Bwahahahaha.

Glorious Knitting

I didn't post yesterday... or did I? I have been lost in knitting.  And it is wonderful.

I knit most of this yesterday.

Today I did a few more rounds to get to the stitch count I wanted and to knit some short rows for back shaping, but it was oh so hard to stop working with the yarn.  It is lovely stuff.  I highly recommend anything from MidKnit Cravings .  And the colour.  Oh the colour.  It is like a slice of juicy apple green hidden inside a mossy catcus green with hints of olive.  There is just so much depth and warmth and richness to the tones.  It is truly glorious.

I still had a bit more knit left in me when I got to my desired stitch count so the next step was to start the main body of my modified Sun Dogs sweater.

 I want to make the start of the body a folded collar, though I am a bit concerned that it will look too heavy.  I am going to think about it over night.  

I also realized that it was time to stop knitting.  My hands were still good, but three hours of knitting was more than I intended.  It was so very hard to stop but I stayed strong and I put it away.  

But I am really, really looking forward to more knitting in the morning. 

Happy Days

I still have to knit in a controlled sort of way, not with the free abandonment normal to me, but I am knitting and it feels immeasurably good.  

I am working on the striped Elton cardigan that I was working on when last I knit.  There hasn't been visible change but then it is just four row stripes and the Elton pattern.  

It looks just like this, but longer.  I have about three inches till the body is done, then some sleeves and it will be complete.  I look forward to a perfect summer sweater.

I also decided to cast on for a variation on Laura Aylor's Sun Dogs.  When I was knitting it last time, my head was not clear and I just could not seem to get the yoke right.  It wasn't a big deal to rip it out and prepare for a restart.  I wanted to have a turtleneck collar on it in the green that I hope to use for the edges of the sleeves and the hem.  

I have really come to hate having a chilly neck during the long chilly winter and a high close fitting neck is increasingly important to my comfort level.  

I have only one skein and I am not sure that there is enough to do them all, so I am debating ordering another skein, just in case.  There is always the issue of no dye lots and I have had this yarn for over a year so I would expect a somewhat different colour, but I am not too worried because all areas I want to have in the green are separate.  I think I should be okay.  (Crossing fingers.  Crossing toes.) Time may prove me foolish but what the heck, it doesn't hurt to try.

I am so looking forward to days with knitting in them, but I am also going to be very, very careful that the injury doesn't happen again.

Yesterday was a bit stressful, but my wee grandson, Everett came through surgery and while it isn't great news, it isn't all bad news and all I can really say is wear a mask or simply stay home if you are feeling unwell.  

Otherwise I.  Am.  Knitting.

It isn't a lot and it isn't for long but it is happening with no pain from my hands. And that is enough for right now. 

Big news in my little worlds

I have not bothered posting over the last few days because there just was never very much to say.  I am very boring without my knitting.  (As opposed to the usual level of boring about the knitting, of course).  It doesn't mean I haven't been busy.  I have been very very busy.

I decided that before I was deep into knitting again, I wanted to get a good start on the bedding for my wee house bedroom.  I had a general plan and aided by a miniature quilt how to book that has been on my shelf for more than two decades, got a start.

This is the basic starting layout. and the plan was to do simple squares alternating with white fabric.  I left the smallest margins that I could leave and gave them all a good pressing.

None of the ends were perfect, but perfection was not a thing I worried about.  There was lots of fabric and I expected many ends.

The bits and ends pile.  The trimmings went into the waste bin. And then I did two sections of the cuts to make teeny squares, shook my head and realized that the whole point of this was to have fun and make it pretty.  It did not have to be any sort of quilt but what I would make for myself and I am not into extreme fussiness.  

Squares would have become really fussy really fast.  So no squares.  Good to go.

Then it was time to add the edging fabric, more white strips.

Then the edgings needed a good trim and I lay it on the bed to test and 

I am very pleased.  I think there will be some embroidery, wee flower vines in the colours of the wall paper, I think to accent the white.  I already have a scrap of flannelette ready to be the batting so the quilt sandwich is well under way.

Next up I made pillow cases for my little fold over flannel pillows.  They are just a simple white pocket with a closely zigzagged open edge.  That edge is a fair foundation for the wee crocheted edging I want to make for the cases.

Tomorrow, the plan is for some embroidery to see if it looks right and then if I am lucky, assembly of the quilt. It isn't perfect and I beg that quilters among you do not look to closely please.  For all that, I am pretty darn chuffed.

In even brighter news, I knit three rows on a sweater today (slowly and separated by a it of sewing) and with luck, there will be no pain, buzzing, or tiredness of the hands tonight.  

It is also my wee tiniest grandson's difficult day tomorrow.   Everett has a little bit of surgery tomorrow and though the problem isn't a giant problem, it still brings a lot of worry into the week.  He does have to be put under anesthesia for it so we worry.  I am keeping my heart steady and trusting in the doctors and the Stollery.