Too Darn Hot

Yesterday the temperature here was 34.1 and that is just too hot for anything.

It was too hot to read.  It was too hot for knitting.  It was too hot to play solitaire on the computer. It was too hot for TV.  I have no idea what I did all day, but whatever it was, it was too hot for it.  This couldn't have come at a better time.

I know.  That sounds odd, that the heat and that it was too hot should have a right time.  My right hand was a little over stressed from the day I quilted the white square.  It was achy in a not good way.  Even a week later, there still is a little of it in the very center of my right hand.  I can see that I am going to have to be more careful to work the quilt in with everything else.  

While I am enjoying watching the puffing, I can tell you for certain, quilting will never, ever be where I stay. This is a chore, make no mistake about it, but I set myself on this course so long ago.  In some ways, it is something I thought about since I was a very little girl.  That there is wool in the centre of it is happy circumstance.  If it wasn't for the wool batts, I think I would have happily tossed the project when I moved.  Yes I loved the design of this quilt, but quilting has always been about having a warm blanket.  Its about getting it done, once or twice in a lifetime.  

Doing it is also about simply using what is on hand, consuming less.  Other than the thread for the quilting, I am making do with what I have. The binding is going to be just the extra backing folded forward over the top because the fabric is there.  I debated about a crisp white edge, but really, there is lots of fabric there already and well, I already have this.

The hand is feeling much better this morning but I am still going to take it easy again today. Light knitting, and again, not too much of it.

The forecast is for hot again today.  There are clouds around, so with a little luck, it won't be nearly so warm today.  It it heads to that horrible hotness, I am going to go find a cool place for a couple hours. I might just go to the mall and find a quiet place on a bench and sit and knit,  

And that is the only time I will ever look forward to going to the mall. and you can count on that.

Outside

Each morning, one of the very first things I do is go check my pots on the deck.  If I leave it till later, my wee eastern facing deck become just too hot to walk on.  The lady who lived here before me wove some bamboo blinds through the rails and my neighbour once asked if I was going to take the ugly things down.  They are ugly and I was going to do it, but not yet.  That little bit of shade on the floor makes all the difference in the world to the total amount of heat reflected by the deck floor. 

I sure wish I could bottle that excess for winter.

Anyway, I have flowers to attend to, but I also picked up a tomato just for fun this year and to see it would go.  I would take a picture of it but the plant itself is in a pretty sorry state.  In order to keep it on the hot days, it lives in the shade of one of the tables. 

My first big harvest.

The itty bitty teeny weeny ones are the best!

Next year I am going to try cucumbers and bigger tomatoes.  I am also going to do something about the heat.  I intend to plant some hops along the rails, and have them grow up to give shade.  I am also hoping that they see fit to grow higher to give a little bit of privacy to the corner I usually sit in.

There are a few outside chores to tend too before the hops can be planted, but step by step, this is becoming home.

Quickly

While each individual day seems long, the weeks fly by slowly and once again speed up when you see how fast a month flies by.  I look at my stash and I wonder how on earth I will ever knit it up.

I've been thinking a lot about lace lately.   A neighbour si taking her first steps into lace after looking at some of my books.  She has fallen and fallen hard.  And I am right there behind her cheering her on.

For as much lace weight yarn I have, there have been very few lace projects.  The 3 that are on my needles right now, two are stalled and one isn't lace really, but rather a lightweight fabric. The 3 are a Bridgewater shawl, an Icarus shawl of really bright coloured yarn and my Viajante.

I do have sweaters I need to complete, but sometime very soon, I am going to knit a massive lace shawl, one of the airy light wonders that I do so admire, that inspired my stash, that lifts my imagination to new heights.

What else I have been up to

It's not like quilting is the only thing this blogger  has been up to.  In fact, other than one single day, I have pretty much ignored the beast at the back.  I am calling it that because the quilt on the frame takes up the vast majority of free floor space in my back room.

I have worked a little on the Magrathea, and I have dabbled a little in crochet on the granny square blanket.  But mostly, I have worked on socks.

 I used the Maia Spins blog tutorial for a toe up flap heel except that I did use half of the stitches.  I like the feeling of a nice full cupped heel.  I think that comes from garter stitch short row heels which fit me so perfectly.

I've been thinking a lot about heels and shapes of toes in socks lately.  And what makes things happen in lace.  Why are some lace designs stretchy and other much less so?  These are the things keeping this brain occupied the last few days.

My July plans are firming up, which is great considering that it is July.  There is some interesting stuff coming up that I am pretty excited about but that is going to have to wait till a little closer to the date.  Suffice it to say that my mind is full and my feet are firmly on the ground and I am looking forward toi today.

Again with the quilting.

One of the toughest parts of getting the quilt going was deciding how I was going to get that intricate pattern for the blank squares on to the fabric.  

First off, the pattern only showed half the design, so I had to do a mirror image and put them together.  That ordinarily wouldn't be a problem but for the hardware issues I have been having lately.  Once my main computer was repaired on Friday, no problem getting that done as you can see.

But, how do I transfer the design to the fabric?  I thought for a very long time before I made the quilt sandwich.  I decided that rather than the heat transfer or a chalk line drawing or even regular pencil or any other of the myriad ways people do this, I was going to go with the Press and Seal route.

I lay a nice smooth sheet of Glad Press and Seal wrap, the kind that tacks to itself, over the pattern sheet I made, and trace the desing with a washable marker.  Then, I take the pattern paper off and simply press the Press and Seal to the fabric, making sure that the square corner matches.  And off I go.

 One of the lines is a little off, but this quilt, a lot is just slightly off.  It will be fine.  You see how there appear to be little flowing wrinkles in the fabric above the flowers?  The fabric is adhered just slightly to the tacky wrap.  It absolutely stayed in place through the whole process.

 All stitched with the wrap on

 And with the wrap removed. If you see tiny bits of blue, those are tiny tiny bits of the plastic that I did not come off when I removed the wrap.  You do have to work a little to get it all off, but I think it's well worth it.  The rest of this process was just so easy and quick.  Any bits that remain at the end of the quilting will disappear in the wash.

Only one small problem.  I oriented the embroidered fan the same way that the pieced fan sat.

As you can clearly see, that is not how the pattern shows it.  I was about half done when I realized my error, and had to have a little time out while I thought about what to do.  I decided to complete the square as is but the rest of the squares are going to be laid on correctly so that the lovely v shape that spans pieced and embroidered squares can happen.  

Its not a perfect solution, but I have always considered perfection highly overrated.  The point, as ever, for me, is the learning, the act of making it, and the joy of using something you made with your own hands.  

Beginning Joy

The quilting has begun. 

I don't know how anyone could bear to send this step out to have a machine do it.

How could you bear handing off the puffing to a stranger?  Or a machine?

I've quilted before.  Simple things.  I made quilts for the boys a couple time through the years, because even my amateurish work was better than store bought quilts in the late 80's.  That was the era of the tricot blankie.  The outer fabric fell apart after a few years and the batting?  What batting? I quilted because no matter how bad I did, I knew the boys would be warm.  They were not pieced work, and the quilting designs came from the patterns on the fabric. Simple, simple blankets.

What I don't ever remember is getting this kind of thrill before.  A lot of it has to do with the ability to take my time.  There isn't any rush to get this done till it gets cold in the fall.  Let's say late September.  I can think while I sew and contemplate all manner of things. 

If you don't look closely, this looks fantastic.  You do have to look past the uneven stitches and past the way that the one pink section doesn't quite make it to the blue like it ought to. It is my secret affair of 20 years and  I am having the most amazing love in with this quilt.

This is square one of row one of 64 squares.  This is also the easy square where the work to be done is laid out right in front of me.  I completely expect that by the time all 8 of the pieced squares and 8 plain squares of the first two rows are all stitched and done, that I will rue the day I thought I should do a quilt this complex by hand and will be dreaming that I had a long arm machine to do it on. 

Yeah, I am pretty sure that the day will come where all the quilting and hand stitching is going to be driving me batty but for now, for just this moment in time, I absolutely love what I am doing.

All things considered

It's funny how just a bit of knitting here and there for a few days in a row, can get big project off the needles.

I still have a crochet edging to do around the fronts and the ties to do, but the knitting is done!  No particular pattern, but inspired by all the crossover front sweaters that were being knit a few years ago.  Its a classic shape that works nicely for me. 

I started this in May of 2013.  Two years and a thousand lifetimes ago. I cried a little when I realised that.  It was started just before everything began.  Days, by my reckoning. I think I must have begun it when Brian was out fishing with his dad and his brothers.  I had hoped to have it finished for a niece's wedding in late July, but by late July...well, that is a story already told. 

I'm pretty pleased.  Its a good piece that will fit with my entire wardrobe, dressy enough closed but laid back and just the right kind of casual open. 


I think the next up is going to be a Lipstick from  Joji Locatelli.  I am not 100 % set on the yarn choice yet.  There is a lovely rich red Ultra Alpaca and there is also a deep forest dark Mission Falls 1824 Wool .  There are numerous other possible yarns in my stash that would look lovely in this pattern, some Madelintosh Tosh DK, Some Elann Sierra Aran.  There are several possibilities of Cascade 220 and to top it off, there is at least one really good choice for it in the cottons bin.  maybe two.

I have finished a project, I have the next in  the planning stage, I have little things to knit on, and I have that quilt to quilt (started that today, but that will be a post for another day) so there is no reason to rush.   

All things considered, its pretty darn good,

Back up and running!

All the computers are now back in service, My bedroom is moved around and cleaned, well, almost.  I have to get the vacuum out and do that yet, but that computer fella?  he is so good he restored the camera thing too!

The computer fella masquerades as son 2 and he really did a masterful job.  I was not looking forward to going to find a Microsoft store and now I don't have to.

There was even a little knitting!

All the sorting out I did the other day worked perfectly (translates as I didn't find any more problems...yet) and the knitting is just flying along.  Flying as in takes forever and an hour to knit one round.

Inside my head, lurks the thought that there is no way this is going to go over my shoulders.  My more logical self accepts that if it takes almost an hour to do a round, there are eleventy billion stitches and with eleventy billion stitches, it is going to fit.  Logical me really ought to win this one.

Also a day wherein I am a little bit sad, but I won't whine, because I get them here all the time. 

My little seasoned traveler is on her way with mommie and with her little brother to go visit Grandma Ludmila and Grandpa Ilya and Great Grandma.  Mommie has very cleverly made sure the wee ones were tired and are ready to sleep, so that once the plane is on its way, the kiddies fall asleep.  With a little luck, my two very sound sleepers will sleep all the way to Amsterdam. 

Fly safe my sweet three.  I can't wait for Kiev photos!

I have one small problem that has been plaguing me this morning.  I have nothing much to write about.  I didn't knit at all yesterday.  And I am going to clean today and a little later my computer guy is coming over and I promised to cook for him in return.  It is also the first day in almost a week that it is cool enough to do things like laundry that add heat to a home.  So yeah.  Its time.  It's not that bad really, just the ordinary mess of one person who a spent the better part of a week under a very large quilt.

There will be quilting in the days ahead.  There will be knitting.,  There might even be spinning because the spinning wheels are moving to the living room to make space to sit and quilt.  They will go back on ce the quilt frame is down. 

Anyway, that is it for me today.  I will squeak a little knitting in somewhere through the day.  ?there is always time for a little knitting, somewhere. 

Contemplating Stripes

 I was just about to post last evening but I think I fried the camera on this thing.  It locked in the camera mode as if it was taking a picture and there I was.  The camera works, but not normally.  Usually it sets itself to gather whatever light it needs and takes these amazing pictures...and it isn't doing that anymore.  It is taking slightly less amazing ones.

I've been busy doing not much.  It has been almost too hot.  Reading was really big this weekend!

I did knit though.  It felt like I knit forever on this sweater shown above. The rows are long and it is nothing but stockinette.  I have more inches that I would like left to knit, but it really needs to be longer and I am determined to beat the lazy knitter's curse, the too short sweater. There was knitting on a sock too.  I had zero on the needles and that just isn't right.  A new one, just for me.

 I'm really enjoying the stripes!  Not that this surprises me at all.  Stripes appear to be very much my thing. It's a Lang Jawoll cotton, wool and nylon blend, my favourite for summer socks.

While I knit these simple and endless things, I pondered a sweater for my wee Carter.  I am not going to take the completed one apart.  I just couldn't  bear that, and since I would have to go back to the very beginning to make it completely right, that pretty little blue sweater will go to his smaller cousin, Marcus.

The multi coloured yarn, Sirdar Stripes isn't a vailable anymore, and I still have my heart set on a cute little striped envelope neck sweater for him and I have finally decided how I am going to accomplish this.  I am off to the store for a few balls of different colours of Baby Bamboo.  The stripes in this sweater are going to be made by layering colours. 

I haven't quite decided if it will be stripes of one row of each of three colours, or if it will be a pattern of stripes making a design of varying numbers of rows of colour. It could also be two of blue, two of colour b , 2 of blue, two of colour c.  That kind of thing.  It will play out as a I go.  I cannot test it till I get the yarn. 

No matter how I do it, there are going to be tons of ends to weave in.  

And now, I must be off.  I am going out to play with all my special kiddies today.  One set in the morning and one set late this afternoon.  

Socks and batts, Batts and socks.

So, when you knit on socks, even a little, you finish.

A simple pair of good stripey Monstersocks.  Not a matchy matchy pair but a good serviceable, pair from all the things that are leftover.  I love that about Monstersocks.  This pair in particular, made from some very small balls of bits and two larger more brightly coloured balls.  But the darks?  There are 5 different bits in there.  And I really do like that.

I spent the whole day yesterday working on the quilt.  The backing is now firmly attached to the quilt frame.  The quilt is large and I am not 100% sure that if I work the whole thing, wide borders and all, that it won't be bigger than my bedroom!

Nest step.  Wool batts.  I opened a wool batt the other day and was so impressed.  When I first got this pile of batts, I opened one and I wasn't sure how I was going to use it.  It was kind of misshapen and was thick and thin. It was a little bit of a mess.  A lot of my worry over the batting process was because of what I saw in that first batt.

The batt I opened the other day was lovely.  Perfectly rectangular.  Even thickness.  Lovely straight sides.  It will be easy to work with these if the rest are like this one,.

Onward to the batt cave.

And look, only a week behind on the plan.  Doin just fine.

A Safe Place at the End of a Day

 Well, there you have it.  I've been mucking about with so many things and knitting here and there and being so busy that I have nothing much to show for my efforts.  That is ok, because I have been playing with my grandbabies!  I spent the afternoon and evening yesterday with my sweet Cassie and Marcus and I ain't going to lie.  I am pooped.  Cassie had a good long nap but Marcus, who is a mover and a shaker extraordinarie, did not.  He is just walking and is very busy getting into everything.  

He slipped into the kitchen for just a moment, and I thought, he is just around the corner.  If there was trouble, I would hear something right?  

Not so much.  

He decided to play at the water cooler.  That switch to pour water is just perfect for wee adventurers.  He knows he isn't supposed to touch, and when you scold him, he looks at you, all innocence and sweetness, the little stinker.  He has no fear whatsoever and he is inquisitive and daring and keeping up with him is a full time occupation.

Grandma spent the day chasing him, and all I have today is a bit of knitting woes, or rather resolution after knitting woes from Tuesday.  

I have been working on Viajante with a great deal of vigour and was well into the lace when I realized that I had made an error at the increase side.  There wasn't any way to drop down and repair.  It was one of those times where the only way to fix it was to bite the bullet and pull back many many rows. It's lace and tearing back significant portions of lace required a long time out.

After my success with the quilt top and the backing, I felt daring enough to give it a go. If it didn't work out, the final resolution would be to rip all the lace back to the stockinette and just redo it.  That isn't something you really want to do on the long long rows of a Viajante, but it is not insurmountable by any means.  It just took some time to accept that.

 That soft delicate fabric and that fine yarn.

 

A mouse nest of yarn.

Like so many times before, it sorted itself out, I picked up all the stitches just fine, and my fear of doing it was worse than actually doing it.

Whenever I rip back, I try to get that first row knit again, to reset the stitches and to see if I can figure out just where I am, but not on this.  It was late.  The light was waning and with this fine stuff, I did not want to push my luck.  It had been such a good day.  The quilt fabric layers are ready.  The lace error was gone.  

I knit on a sock for a while.  Socks are a safe place and a fine way to finish up a very good day.

 

A finished thing

It doesn't have to be a big thing to give your head a big boost of project related energy.  Nah uh.  Small is good.  Finished is better.

I am so pleased with these.  Not a Monstersock but an honest to goodness Ugly Duckling sock done just for the sheer pleasure of it.  

These are for my wee peanut's grandma.  The other one.  We were talking the other day and she said she would never say no to a pair of socks.  I just took her up on it.

I have completed 7 pairs of socks this year so far, 3 of them were gifts.  That is good, though honestly, I could use a few more pair for my own sock drawer.  So next pair?  Mine.

And then again, I have completed 7 pairs of socks this year.  That is a fair bit of socks being we are only 6 months in.  I think I like it!

Well, here I sit.  According to the weather man, we are heading into a week or two of really hot weather.

I have to get the quilt on the rails before it gets too warm. I don't want to hold it and baste it when it is too hot to handle a winter blanket.  I could manage a smaller thing but something the size of a bed cover?  Too much.  Get it on quickly is going to have to be my motto.  And yet after all these many many years, there isn't anything about this quilt that is quick. No point in rushing now.  I am nothing if not efficient at putting a thing off but in my small house, there are no corners to hide stuff in.  If I am constantly stepping on it, it gets done faster, whether I plan it or not.

In the heat of the afternoon, I am going to plan for some scarf knitting, or sock knitting, or maybe some cotton basket crocheting.  Elisabeth Zimmermann in the Knitter's Almanac, says summer is the time for small things.

I think quilting is going to be a morning occupation.

A quarter of the wee beastie.

It should be noted, now that I have all the borders on the top, that I need a bigger bed.  Just sayin'.

It's a crapshoot

This thing called knitting is a crapshoot.  Do you recall this?

Please note how nicely the sweater fits.  Like a glove, I tell you.

Which is really great, except I was kind of knitting it so it would fit in fall when you will really need a sweater.  Even the sleeves fit perfectly now.  

It seemed small, and I was putting it down to the missing 4 stitches at the underarms, but while they would have given the body the extra room it requires, it would not have given me the growth room I was hoping to put into this sweater.  The sleeves are much too narrow too.

So, back to the drawing board.  The debate is do I unravel this entire garment or do I see if I can find the same yarn because I really really love the way it felt and mommy liked it too, or do I unravel and just reknit what I have.  The sweater would fit my other wee boy with some growth allowance in it.  Marcus is a tiny thing in comparison and those few months younger mean it will still fit in fall.

Ugh.  I hate starting a week like that, but uggh.

I Remember Flowers

For many years, our family farmed.  It was the 80's and interest rates were high to the point of insanity.  We had 3 small kids and there were not a lot of jobs in town. Brian worked for his brother's business, spending long weeks away.  He did that for many years till we had no choice and to save the farm, we left it to his brother.  (2 families could not live off one farm then or now, and they had a good stable professional income besides the farm.)

During those years where he worked out, the routine was 2- 3 weeks out and 2 days home.  The home days were also when the farming was done, so time for kids and family was precious and time for Brian personally, almost zip.  One sunny summer morning, he played hooky, and went for a walk.

That one particular Sunday morning, he went out, and I remember how happy he was when he came back to the house.  He had come home, tired and worn out from 12 - 15 hour days, and he was restored by the sun and the smell of summer; of grass, and flowers and leaves on trees and the sound of wind in the trees.  I remember his smile as he walked in the door.

He brought me a big bouquet of wild flowers.  I still remember that.  

Purple asters and white yarrow and goldenrod.  And some of the tall grasses that grew alongside with their droopy late summer seed heads.

I am not much one for bouquets of flowers.  I think it has to do with that.  How do you beat a hand picked bouquet of flowers fresh from the pasture?  

Store bought roses?  Not even close.

Dandelions delivered in grubby hands by grandchildren?  Ok.  That gets close.  Really close.

There are some sweetnesses that cost nothing that stay with you all of your days.  I remember flowers.

Unbridled Optimism

Forgive my unbridled optimism of yesterday.  I was so sure it was all ready.

I got out the books and spent a couple of hours reading.  Nobody talks about batt technique at all.  So I guess that means, wing it.  Ok, good to go.  I have winged it before and not failed utterly and like most times, common sense and reason will get me through this.  So long as the batts are the same thickness all over, it will be fine.  If it looks lumpy, spread it out or remove it.  Butt the edges or do a slight overlap where it seems to need it.

I have read in several of my books, that it might be wise to put quilting lines on the fabric before the sandwich is made.  If this were a simple quilting pattern and it was all done on block edges like the quilts made when I was little, I wouldn't worry about it.  But it is rather more complex.

There is a lot of quilting to do on the plain white squares and its going to be important that the stitch patterns are reasonably squared to the rest of the blocks.  It's a lot of work but this is what happens when you fall in love and just purchase a thing without really thinking it through. I fell in love with the look of this and so it remains.  Thankfully, the hard part of the sewing is done.  All those curves.

The quilt borders have to be sewn on and a decision must be made about binding.  Will the binding be attached to the top or will the binding be done after all the quilting is completed?

There are some pretty significant tasks to do before I get to the sandwich but I will get there. 

Beam me out, Scotty

There was a point yesterday afternoon where I was kind of stuck in a small uncomfortable chair, surrounded by long pieces of quilt frame.  I could not move to get to the computer and I could not move to get out of the room.  I sort of built myself in.

The quilt frame is built and while I am pleased with it in some ways, man it is big.

Now I begin to make the quilt sandwich.  I have the base ready to go.  I have the top.  The tricky bit is that bag of small batts.  Every single quilt video online is working with a single large batt.  Doing that would be a breeze.  These small batts of wool that I will be using are going to have to be put together, on the backing and will have to be held in place with a lot of sewing after the quilt sandwich has been assembled.

I have several books on quilting and hope to find a little something to reinforce what I remember from when I was a little girl.  In my minds eye, I can see Auntie Lorraine placing the small batts made with her hand cards on the backing, which was attached to the frame.  But I don't remember if anything was done to hold them together or if the pieces were just placed and snugged closely together.

I do know, that each of the aunties who were getting a quilt that year, had assembled a patch work top from left overs from sewing and from old clothes that were no longer repairable.  None were the fancy kind of top that people make today.  They were things that were serviceable, that looked nice, but that were simple, because on top of the work of sewing a top, they had baking and kids and meals, and a thousand and one other things to do that took so much more effort than things do today.  Its a cold country here and a wool quilt was a necessity, not just something pretty for the top of the bed.  The many rows of squares meant that there was a lot of sewing and that each of those small hand cards was held firmly in place by quilting it all together.

So today, my goal is to figure out how best to lay out and secure the batts and with luck, to be ready to begin quilting tomorrow.

Mucking About 2

So here I am, once again, not knitting.  I did knit on the sock yesterday, all day and am now at the heel, but today, I just didn't have the urge.

I have some big things that it is time to get to work on.  This morning, I pulled out these.

Quilt batts.  Eight of many.  Many, many. Many.  They are stored in very very large containers in the wool room.  They take up way more space in there than I like and I mean to resolve that.  

Step one.  Make the quilt you wanted them for in the first place.

I have the top ready.  Its been ready for years and years.  I have the back.  Its so old that I fear when I pull out the fabric, its going to fall apart from age.  Well, not really but this project, this quilt started back in 1990 when we lived in Calgary.  I bought a pattern kit at a small quilt shop at my neighbourhood mall.  They boys were little.  In elementary school. All the fabric was purchased after we moved to Edmonton, before I was working full time. Everything was sized for a queen sized or larger quilt though it will only be a double to suit my bed now.  I have it all.  It is past time to put it together.

 I planned to get this job done last winter.  In February, I decided it would be a great thing to do in spring.  Its only days away from summer.  I am not working.  I want it for next winter.  Badly. It is time to get off my waffly path and just do it.  

So, 

build a quilt frame, self.  Just do it.

Step two of the quilt batts? I don't quite know yet, but there are many interesting possibilities on the internet. Pads for my mattress, and as pillow stuffing or to make a reading wedge.  I could use some draft stoppers for my exterior doors and I have debated about a small quilt for my lone south window in the second bathroom. I have also debated re-carding them into nice spinnable rolags for long draw spinning. Plenty of choices.

If none of these work out, some of my neighbours are quilters.  They will have resources.  Somebody will want them if I don't.

  

  

Mucking About

Having finished my sweet Peanuts sweater, I was a little at loose ends.  I just wasn't sure I was ready to work on the sweater and I really had no ideas of what to do besides the many things I already started.  I picked up Magrathea again and knitted rather desultorily on her.  

I just wan't feeling it this morning, so I decided to see if another book would wend its way into my head.  It did.  I read almost half!  That feels more like me and pepped me right up.  I was ready to knit.  But for one thing.

Once again, I find myself with only 1 set of socks on the needles and that bugs me.  Everything is so big right now, and really, small things appeal.  I really do like their fast moving nature.  I teased someone into a pair of socks, and I really got enthusiastic when she said she would never turn them down.

I suspect she is familiar with the magic of sock knitting.

I dug in the sock yarn bin and thought for a bit about what I wanted.  She is pretty special and I haven't knit anything for her yet.  She is the mum to one of my daughters in law and I am sure she will like these.

 It's another pair of the Ugly Duckling socks.  I choose these because I don't want to do colourwork, yet the yarn will be really showy set off against a dark plain such as the gray.

You can barely see the patterning, still, you see its rich colours playing their games.  The gray is a nicely heathered Phildar Folk Sock and the colour is Jawoll Magic Degrade, a stunning single spun graduating colour change yarn.  

I am going to enjoy watching this play out.  

Waiting on Maybe

I picked up the needles on this sweet sweater and slogged through the issues, and then I really started to enjoy it.

I still have to try it on my wee boy for fit at the under arms.  This may not be the last you see of this sweater.  It might be that I have to take apart the body, pull out the second sleeve, and the yoke and go all the way back to the end of the first sleeve to work in those armscyce stitches.  

The world doesn't wait for maybes.  It moves on.  For now, the sweater is done and I am pleased.

Not as far as I hoped.

I did not get as far as I hoped on the wee sweater.  But it is moving along.  I have to get things ready for Sunday though, so that I can have it tried on to see if I have to pull back.  Though I admit, I am kind of wondering if a wee steak, well sewn to within an inch of life, would work.  

So, in it's place, I will show you this.

Completed socks.  They aren't as short as they appear and are really quite perfect.  Plenty left for another pair of socks and there should be enough to get close to the end of a sock for a third pair.I think I have a few more skeins of this yarn in this colour somewhere, so somewhere in the future, there will be more pairs just like this.

Does anyone dream of moths besides me?  I woke early this morning from a dream of an infestation of a single tiny moths.  I hate when that happens.

After truly horrible awful Days.

After truly horrible awful days, one should be rewarded by nice days and I was.  Good knitting and dinner with a friend made it so.

When we last met, we, the proverbial me, were avoiding everything because there were issues.  I have not gone back to my sweater as I planned.  I went back farther, to Carter's sweater, which is where the latest bout of avoiding began.  

But not before I started something new.  

It's another fan scarf form my auntie.  She was so pleased with the one completed a few weeks ago, and these are such nice speedy to knit not needing thinking projects.  The yarn is Summertime from Diamond Luxury Collection.  Americans might find a very similar product from Plymouth yarns.  This is going to be my take along knitting till it is done.

But once the fan scarf was established, I stopped avoiding and started knitting. What a fine mess of yarns and needles.

 I was going to give myself once chance to try to resolve it on the run, and I think I have it.  I won't really know until I get at least a part of the second sleeve done.  That is kind of a bummer, to have to knit so much more before knowing whether my fix is going to work but what the heck.  One error is resolved.  Onward.

The first issue was a stopping on the wrong row error.  It meant that I had to start the back of the yoke from the opposite point of the pattern and I had to sort that out. That resolved quite satisfactorily.

The bigger error may not.  I forgot to bind off 4 stitches on the back yoke for the underarm.  Well 2 stitches really, but that two stitches means that the there is no 4 stitch armscyce which gives ease where arm and sleeve join.  It means that the sleeve and body will need to be larger for my special little boy to move easily in it.  And I won't know if I have that, till the second sleeve is partway done.  Once it is, I can take it and try it on him.  He is little enough that if grandma wants to give it a go, he will sit , more or less, compliantly.

But the sweater, the first in the most recent spate of avoidince is moving forward.  Maybe once this small sweater is done, and resolved, I can move forward and fix the larger sweater.

It was an excellent day and today looks like it will be lovely.

The socks are done, but no photo yet, though there will be.  I want to keep the project socks page current on Ravelry.  

Other than that my day was filled with things that were so completely stupid and bad that I am utterly out of sorts and not fit for human interaction.  

On the upside...Oh wait...

Delayed

I delayed looking at the sweater.  

As you can see, knitting happened.  Oh the games we play when we wish to avoid something more difficult.

That is actually sock two.  It is morning, early morning, and yes the coffee is ready.  This is yesterday's sock one.

I had a little fun with it.  I decided to change up from my usual heel of late and the toe too.  I went with a more standard, but knit to fit my stubby foot kind of toe.  A standard heel is usually done on a few less than half the stitches, but I wanted an older fashioned heel.  3 stitches extra per side were added and that became this nice deeply cupped heel.

And I did a slipped stitch heel for that little extra, putting the firmness and extra tightness where my wearing pattern always puts the holes and not on the back of the foot where the usual top down heel flap would have them.  And then a nice short cuff  which kind of works for my stubby thick feet and ankles.

Sock two, as you can see from photo number one, is well on its way to completion.  I expect it will be done by midday.  

The coffee is on.  And once the sock is done, maybe I'll be cured of trying to avoid the sweater.

Odds and Sods.

I was kind of hoping to have an almost complete sweater to show you, but it is in the corner and I am having a good long think about it.  There is a thing happening on it that I do not like and no one but me to decide what I ought to do.  I highly suspect that I will pull it back to the underarms or very near there at least.

Sigh.

What to do, what to do when the world isn't going your way?  Well, at least I kept busy.

I pulled out everything I had that needed finishing and wove in ends.  There were 2 things, Cassie's sweater, and my Kureyon sweater.  Cassie's is complete now. 

 I wove in ends when I was at the neighbourhood SnB and sewed buttons on this morning. (The pins are acting as button stand-ins)

It looks ever so much nicer in real life.  The colours tend to get washed out in the daylight with my little camera.

The Kureyon sweater had all its ends woven in on Friday night as I sat up late watching movies. There still are some things to be worked on, such as deciding what kind of closures to use and what to do about the neckline - I am debating adding an i-cord - still to come, but it is ready for whatever I do decide.  Pictures of it then.

And then what.  Other than the buttons, that left a whole lot of weekend.  

I loved this sweater, and I think about knitting another better version all the time.  It had its flaws but it was a fun knit and I love the idea of how it was constructed.  its flaws eventually acted to kill it.  

The front is the amazing Drops Big Fabel and the back ordinary Cascade 220.  I wore it a lot and one slightly less than careful wash for only a couple minutes, led to its being felted.  I still wore it but each wash made the felting worse.  I cut off the felted bits, and deconstructed the whole thing to end up with lovely piles of curls,

 

which eventually became sturdy balls of yarn destined for socks.

 

I ought to be able to get two pairs of socks from this, with a little bit left over.  And, since I don't have any socks but for Frankensocks on the go, the socks will be a reality soon enough.

And that was my weekend.  A weekend of bits and bobs and odd and ends. Now I must go face the music and face that sweater.  No point in delaying.  The coffee is on and it is time.

Into the stretch

I am deep into the stretch.  Not the home stretch.  That is a ways off, but I am definitely into the stretch.

 It's going to look like this for a while.

I am messing with the front of the sweater somewhat. One of the other things I am working on is the Still Light sweater, and I confess to being fascinated by the front pocket on that sweater.  I haven't yet gotten to the knitting of the pocket, but I do like the approach, and I appear to be heading for an inspired by look for this sweater.  

That is what happens when you read ahead in sweater patterns.  All of a sudden you find yourself knitting stuff from one into the other.  Sometimes it works and sometimes not so much but no matter.  In the end, you usually get a sweater to wear.

I have a bunch of things I am piling up in front of me to do on the weekend.  I really would like to get them finished.  Yes finishing.  The lovely Muylio Lino, Cassie little sweater, my Kureyon sweater from so very long ago, I barely remember knitting it, and one to take apart that makes me sad, but the front is good yarn and the back is getting felted.  There is a story there, but that will wait for next week.

Beyond the Proto-Sweater Stage

And then there were sleeves!

I did  not think I was going to get those done yesterday.  Now that I think of it, I didn't but I did end the day with only the last cuff to be knit this morning.  And that pleases me to no end.

When I first started knitting, I recall reading a blog where the poster said she no longer felt she was a sweater knitter because she could not bring herself to knit the sleeves.  I understand that feeling.

I hate knitting sleeves. They feel fiddly to me.  It isn't the small diameter.  That feels normal and good, but I sure do hate flipping the body of whatever I am working on. The hassle of flipping that sweater body while knitting sleeves on the body of seamless sweater is the only reason that I might someday, knit a sweater in pieces.

Much as I hate all the flipping, I want the finished sweater more.  That makes it easy to push through to the end of the second sleeve.  

Now comes the part that so many knitters feel is endless stockinette.  I like this part.  Nothing to do, but knit and knit and knit.  

I expect to hate the large swath stockinette down the road, but I am going to enjoy the more or less mindless bit for a while.  

That Pre-Sweater stage

You know that pre-sweater stage?  I am so there.

I am in that sleeve stage, right about where I am trying to figure out if I ought to have decreased faster, or if I should just accept what is.  There still is a good 5 or 6 inches to knit so plenty of time to decrease for sleeves.  I worry anyway, just because I can.  It's like running out of yarn, only about sleeves.

Seriously though, I ought to have done the math, but that would be too easy.  There is nothing like living dangerously.  Generally the fit is just right if I decrease slowly through the top half of the sleeve and then speed it up at the elbow.  It usually fits about right if I decrease every 5th or 6th and then every 3rd or 4th if it is a worsted or dk weight yarn.  

I did not get as much done as I had hoped too.  I spent the morning with my accountant, and had lunch with my daughter in law and my grandkids before coming home.  And then, I sat up late in the evening and knit and knit. 

Today is rife with errands but before I do that, I intend to do the really important things.  After a couple gray cool days, its bright and sunny. I mean to make the most of it and see coffee on the front porch playing a big part of my day!

just goofin' around

Recently, as in today, I picked up a replacement for my ancient (vintage 2007) laptop whose built in wifi died.  I also needed to upgrade my very serviceable, but no longer supported by anybody Playbook.  I am not putting either of these aside.

The laptop still works and I do still use it, but everything I do on it has to be manually transferred by USB flash drive.  Mostly it is used for writing.  All of the files were moved to Brians old behemoth computer so the little lappy is really just for the stuff that comes in between the writing that I do here.  It is, old as it is, sometimes a backup for a lot of the woolly stuff too.  

I love my Playbook.  It just is such a sound piece of equipment.  I can drop it and have done so many, many times and it just shows up to work.  Playbooks small size makes it a great reader platform for e books and the ability to change its reading screen to night reading was greatly appreciated on some very long nights in hospital.

 I had hoped to simply use my very large phone, but even with its large screen (as big as many small tablets and e readers), it had issues. It could do Audible and it could do Netflix, but the type was just too small and it was so painfully slow.  It does not even come close to being an adequate e reader.  It has been fine in a pinch, but I am so tired of pinching.

Please forgive me.  I am going to play a little.

My new tea tins.  They were close.  I had just finished putting the tea in them before I went off to pick up this little unit. Camera.  Tested.  Upload.  Tested.  Blog post test.  In progress.

If anybody is interested, I bought a Microsoft Surface.  Not the fancy pro kind, just the new Surface 3.  I wanted something that could do the things my little laptop could do for me without the weight. It is a tablet that runs on regular windows software, so everything I could do on a small laptop is doable here.  It has a USB port and expandable memory too.  Even with the pop off keyboard, it is light enough that I can carry it with me whereever I go.  

Well, now that I have updated my device portfolio it is time to complete the upload and blogging test.  Plus it is time to knit.  And maybe have some of that nice tea via Steeped Tea  that I got these neat little containers for and...

Just a Zipping Along

I am just zipping along.

I love working with this yarn.  It would be considered splitty by many, but I think that is part of why I am enjoying it so much.  Its a challenge to keep those little smooth loops smooth.  

And there is the ever entertaining twisted stitches.  The narrow little collar ribbing was twisted.  The raglan 'seams' were twisted as well.  I have done a try on and my early unblocked try says the raglan does indeed work well for me with this wider, more open collar. I made some changes to the rate of increases at certain points along the fronts but you cannot tell at all where they are.  The perfect line of open work holes remains.

Now that I am below the underarm joins, the side 'seam' is marked  by a set of twisted stitches, which will continue down the side of the body and the sleeve 'seams' continue the distinctive little trim.

These small twisted sections keep popping up in the field of stockinette and it keeps it interesting.  It's a small reward that your head waits for and starts to crave.

We shall see how far we get before we power out.  If we power out.  Or not.  These twisted stitches are messing with my mind.  Its like two row stripes.  You just have to keep knitting.