Good enough for me

So close.  So very close.

This is all the yarn that remains to be used up for my third chair pad.  

I.  Am.  So.  Glad. It's almost done.  

As I was starting this chair pad, I picked out and sorted yarn for the next couple of chair pads.

One in green and gold and 

One in a mix of blues and an assortment of dark greys and blacks.  

I really don't want to work on these colours.  Maybe on the blues but I couldn't work on those greens and gold if it killed me.  I just don't have the heart for that right now.  

What I will do, I think is start one in the bag of left overs and assorted colours.  

So long as there is 400 grams in here, a pad will successfully be made.  Though as I paw through things here, maybe I should do the blue first.  Just not the green and gold.  

I am so happy that it is September.  Summer was a blur of pain and disorder and I hope that fall and cooler temperatures will work magic on me.  I also hope I get my house back in order and clean again if I have the energy.  Not feeling good made it so hard to keep up.  I also find it difficult to write when I am not feeling good. Ah well.  I feel good today.  Surprisingly good.  I will take it as I find it.

So today I will finish this third chair pad and then I will knit on a sweater.  I don't know which one but one of three or four.  And that will be enough. 

  

So far so fair.

You can see which way my wandering needles took me.

This is my new yarn from Australia's Bendigo Woollen Mills.  This is the Classic line and I can tell you, it is really nice.  

The sweater I am making takes all of its inspiration from the Sock Monkey Cabin Blanket.  I am startingbwith a European shoulder for a nice casual fit so the deep ribs can relax rather than open up.  

So far, so fair.  

Yahoo. Maybe.

I wanted to knit a lot this weekend.  The world didn't work that way.  It was a difficult weekend.  It wasn't pain so much as tired and uncooperative muscles.  Exhaustion is very wearing.  The heat will be done soon and I am looking forward to that.

I did get some knitting in though.

This is the bottom garter ridge section on the back.  I went with a split at the sides because I want to add an additional 5 ridges so it hangs a bit longer.  The front will be fine with 5 ridges.  

After this the sleeves and that is it.  Then I get to knit with something different.  Yahoo. To be honest I'm getting a bit tired of this sweater.  I have been working on it in earnest for a couple weeks now and I'm just so done with it.  This may lead to a wild cast on.  You just never know where things will take me.  

Non cooperation

The chair pad is not cooperating.  

When I was sorting out my yarn kerfuffle, I noticed there was something wrong with the last brown stripe.  It was too wide and that bugged me.  Harumph

For a very simple project this chair pad is a pain.

I am also surprised at how much it bothers me.  Normally, on a chair pad, where you never really see it, I could let it go.  I have no idea why it irked me but it did.  I sorted that out and went merrily on my way.  

I am keeping my focus on emptying this bin of yarn.  I may not really enjoy the work but these thick chair pads are really just the thing.  So much more effective that commercial chair pads.  Just two more pads to go and the task will be done.

It works

For some pretty benign things, these chairpads seem to put out a lot of drama.  

I was working yesterday, on the second last brown stripe when this happened.  

Half of my brown yarn is running out.  Full skeins should give me four full stripes.  These were used partially skeins and I knew that going in.  But now what?  I was sure I had a plan only I did not remember it.

I dug in the bin in case something there would remind me.  And voila!  

  A third partially used ball.  There is lots here for the last stripe.  

Nicely done world. 

Was this my plan?  I have no idea but it works.

Back to sweaters

In between yarn fondling, there was knitting.

And crochet.  My chair pads are proceeding nicely.

I seem to be getting in a stripe each day before I get sick of it.  This was yesterday's progress. 

Back to last Friday, I decided I need to do serious work on one of my existing sweaters.  Any sweater really.  I just want one of them completed before I start on the new yarns.  I decided that the one closest to the finish was going to be my best bet.  

I need 3 inches more on the body.  It seems like I needed 3 more inches on the body for the last month.  I did not put a progress keeper on it because it is striped.  I thought that would be enough but maybe not.  The alternating garter ridges and colour stockinette feels everlasting.  

If you look in the top right of the picture, you can see the last bit of ball one of the Kauni.  It is ending on the pleasing rich green.  I have two more balls of this colourway and one of them starts with the green. No muss.  No fuss.  I have also used three full balls now of the Tove so I will likely use five balls till the sweater is done.  

That's where the day will take me again today.  The chair pad and the sweater will be the work of the day.  And then, I am going to gently nag Keith into getting me a coffee and something treat like from the new coffee roaster and coffee shop in town.  Sounds like a good day all around.  

Ridiculous

I spent the weekend fondling yarn.  If you were here you would have too.  And then I started thinking about the yarn I purchased this year.  It's ridiculous. 

I bought Cascade 220 in February for a Flea sweater which I am so excited to have in my knitting plans again.  And then I ordered yarn for an interesting blanket in neon colours.  I love this project.  

Then I calmed down a bit till I became interested in some Scandinavian yarn from the small Hillesvag mill.  My Ask is that perfect spring green.  Of course if you are shipping from BC, you may as well make it worthwhile.  I also bought some Fjallalopi.  Just to try it of course. 

And then with this lovely Australian yarn.  

It's been a good year for purchasing yarn. 5 sweater quantities and blanket yarn.  Plus a bit of sock yarn too.  It's been a decent year for knitting too but since my goal is to knit from stash, buying yarn is not what I ought to be doing.    At this rate, I will need another bin, just for this year's yarn.  

Obviously I need to knit lots and lots, just for the fun of it. It's really all quite ridiculous and I love it.

It came!

It came!  It came!  It came!

I watch a number of Australian and New Zealand podcasts. It's interesting seeing a different perspective of the world even in knitting.  Different yarns.  Different seasons.  Watching them for the last year made me very aware of yarn festivals and yarn lines that we never hear about here.  

It made me want.  Not going to lie but I became obsessed by Australian yarns.  I debated all summer.  I put the idea firmly aside several times.  

  I caved.  And I am completely and utterly thrilled.  It came. I could hardly believe it when Keith said yes it was at the post office.  I felt like a little kid waiting for Christmas.

It's lovely yarn.  

I started with their Classic line. These giant wonderful balls are 200 grams and 400 metres of Australian goodness are $16.95 Australian.  Our dollars are pretty much equal at the moment so it's a pretty great price. It was $45 shipping but again, when you think of the price of shipping within Canada and how far this has to come, it is reasonable.  There were taxes and duty of $18 on the package, an expected cost.  There were 2 sweaters worth of yarn in my package so when you add all of it up, it is about $120 per sweater.  That is a decent price , in my opinion.  Not a bargain price to be sure but reasonable.  

Classic is an interesting yarn.  It has a crepe twist.  Or spin.  Or ply.  There is a little bit of a different look and feel to it.  

I hope you can see that little bit unusual looking twist.  I can't wait to knit with it and I can't wait to wear it.  

Guess what it's going to be.  

It's going to be a sock monkey style sweater.  Body marled, ribbing cream and red like a good sock monkey.  I have wanted more monkey business for a while but I've knit enough blankets.  Time for something for me.  

Because the cost of shipping was an up to 10 balls sort of thing, you know what I did.  

I fell for the Rustic Tweed.  These are utterly beautiful tweeds.  Rich deep colours and a regular twist makes for some pretty great yarn.  I meant to get the green but when I was ordering I think I pushed the button on this colour, Poseidon which was the other colour I was considering. I either colour, it's going to be a great sweater.

This was not a really responsible purchase.  It really wasn't yarn I needed.  I have tons and tons of stash.  Sometimes it's about more than need.  And that's okay.  Even if it's about yarn from Australia.   

Not purple

Harumphhhhh

Working on this last chair pad is giving me a bit of pain in my brain.  I had a great combo of purples except for one problem.  The richest purple ran out before the end of stripe two.  I thought I would get three good purple stripes but nope.  Two.

I had to fill in with something in a bin full of no more purples or even faux purples.

I went with a rich teal for no particular reason than there is a second partial ball of it so I know I will not run short.

On the upside, the Kauni sweater is behaving magnificently.  I am about to get into a rich green section.  Such a gorgeous green.

And that is it for today.  Coffee is on.  Tools at the ready and I am all set to play.

  

Yarn Colour Troubles

Yarn colours are giving me some trouble.  

My box of Palette seemed to have a lot of browns and purples and greens.  Now that I used most of the brights for the Flea sweater and now that I picked out several good colour sets for chair pads, putting together more sets is a problem.  I have a set of blues that goes with nothing.  

I did find a great set of olive greens and golds.

I also managed to make another purples and browns set.

It's not a really inspiring set but it does seem to fit together.

You do see the problem with the blues though.  They don't fit.  I have some white, dark charcoal and a mid grey Palette and I may have to dip into these full bags to sort something out.  

Still chair pad three is underway.  

I did get in some good work on my Kauni sweater too.  

It's a sweater now.  Just a couple inches till I have to decide on the hem.  It's such lovely knitting and the yarns are such a good match.  They have the same rustic softness that I enjoy working with.  

Keith made his perked coffee this morning and I intend to enjoy every drop.  Coffee.  Yarn.  A light morning breeze.  Who could ask for more? 

A win

Go me go.

I have completed chair pad number 2.  ( Insert mad Grover waves here. )

I am thrilled.  Each chair pad uses 8 complete balls of Palette.  Each pad means 1688 m of yarn out of my stash.  I started these on July 26 so in just less than a month, I have used 3376 meters of yarn. Plus I have two chair pads that make life much more comfortable.

I am calling it a win.  

Not going anywhere, thank goodness

I was sitting here this morning checking on the weather for today and suddenly realized I had my pants on inside out.  I thought" Ah.  One of those mornings"

I stuck with the yellow Hiraeth sweater this weekend and I am happy with my progress.  

The pattern is not a compound yoke as I thought but simply round. I find myself worrying about fit.  

I hope it will be okay.  I really do like the way it looks.  Cheerful.  And warm and summery.  It will be a perfect winter sweater. I am crossing my fingers.

Part of my concern is that the increases are fairly severe after the colourwork.  Its so hard to trust the designer.  I will though.  Otherwise I will flounder.  

I am a wee bit glad the weekend is done.  I can work on the Kauni sweater now with a clear conscience.  It fits.  I don't have to worry about that. 

I did get a fair bit done on chair pad two as well.  I barely worked on it and yet, I have one set of stripes left till I run out of yarn.  It zoomed along in 5 minute increments here and there.  I love when that happens.  

I am going to go through the box of yarn today to set up the next chair pad.  This is exciting because I am getting close to emptying this box of yarn.  That always feels good.  

Otherwise it will be another Monday.  It's sunny out and the air smells so clean and fresh.  I feel lucky. I am going to leave my pants inside out.  It's what the world gave me this morning and who am I to question that.  Good thing I don't have to go anywhere.

The search for accurate colour representation.

Before I did anything yesterday, I did a try on of the Kauni sweater.

It's perfect.  I thought it was but it is always nice to be certain.  

I bumped up the colour saturation on this next photo so you can get a better idea of just how pretty this Kauni is.

This is much closer to life than most of the photos you have seen of this sweater.  It feels so completely me and the fit is just lovely.  

I am deciding on the hem now.  I would like to go with a split hem so I can drop the back a bit.  It works nicely to keep the chill off my lower back, no matter what fashion trends say.  I have also done some thinking about sleeves.  My accidental sleeves on my Lusk with a puffier bit at the ribbed cuff may be repeated here.  Still debating this. 

I'm going to work on my yellow sweater today I think.  I'd like to get this one to the part where I join sleeves.  I should be able to get there but you never know.  I might spend time on my beguiling neon blanket.  

Not today but soon.

I had a good working with yarn sort of day even though the rest of the day was kind of a pain.  And any enjoyment of using a dishwasher again  is totally and completely gone in a haze of its working but I hate doing dishes.  Harumph.  Time to go on to the better things.

I seem to get in a stripe a day more or less.  The chairpad grows and that will be enough.  It's not fancy knitting but I have to say, using my first completed one along with the felted sweater pads makes a real difference.  I don't really understand why but it's wool.  Wool seems to make life better.

Big news on my sweater. 

I am finally into the next colour stripe.  It shouldn't feel like such a big deal but it is.  Pretty purple slipping into green.  

For blogging these projects feel a bit boring to blog. I am going to have to see what I can do to improve that for my mental health.  There is some yarn to go back into stash and a bit of yarn to pull out so I am feeling like a good, deep stash dive.  Not today but soon.   

Work work.

Another bright sunny morning.  It's great but the temp for the day is only supposed to be 18 C.  That is not going to help the crops and I really feel for farmers.  

I had a great day yesterday.  It somehow resulted in no visible change to either of the active sweaters though there was good progress on my No. 2 chairpad.

  The working edge is at the bottom in this photo. I really am happy with the colours of this one. The crisp greens are the perfect offset to the roses.  When I was digging in my box o' yarn, I picked the greens with no olive cast.    The roses were anything pink ish.  

It feels really strange but it's getting hard to sort colours.  The box is far from empty but these are all the full balls I have left.  

17 balls.  That doesn't divide by 8 evenly.  I will get two more chair pads from these, and then there is a big bag of partial balls, left over from knitting the Flea sweater.  I am going to do those completely scrappy, still using a melange of colours of course, but using a ball up and then moving on to the next colour.  

Uggg.  I just found 3 more full balls.  

I am going to make chair pads till this yarn box is empty.  I am not really calling this fun work but it is needed work.  It's almost driving me to knitting dishcloths, which I may yet do.  I do have some more cotton in the wool closet.  

The stuff of the day

It's been a lovely weekend.  My kids came to pick cherries and my brother came for a bit of a visit while he does business during the day.  There has been knitting and good company and really that is all I could ever need.

So the knitting...

I finished chair pad 1 and felted it.  When you are felting, it can sometimes be a bit of a crapshoot.  This time it felted up to the perfect size.  I would take a better photo but it is currently in use.  Chair pad 2 is underway, though it was not worked on over the weekend.  

Really liking these colours.  It will be my 'fancy' one.  

I did quite a bit of work on the Kauni sweater too.  

I have one more garter ridge before I go into the next stockinette section.  It is a rich purple and I love it.  It's all starting to look like a sweater and this is the place where I really start looking forward to wearing it.  

With the weekend done, I wanted to get to work on another sweater I have had on the needles for a while.

 This is my Hiraeth sweater.  I am almost at the end of the yoke colourwork.  Then the design moves into a raglan for the rest of the yoke increases.  I am looking forward to seeing how that goes as much as I am looking forward to a finished sweater in this marvelous glowing yellow. 

That it for the moment.  I am almost excited for the stuff of ordinary life today.  I can use the dishwasher again.  It's been 6 weeks and I am almost looking forward to that.  Not really.  It's dishes, my ancient nemesis.  Time for coffee and the stuff of the day.  

Using things up.

Classic procrastinator me avoided the sewing room.  Procrastination is my super power.  Instead, I did this.

And, if you are wondering, the brown is short because that is the brown is almost used up.  Only this remains.

There was quite a bit more of one yarn strand than all the others, but I used it till the first strand was finished.  

When I started this brown stripe, I thought I would get 3 rows completed but I got four rows in, short 9 stitches before the browns gave out.  Decent mileage really.  I decided to just get on with the work and started the last purple row right there.  I wanted to use up the yarn to the bitter end.  Mission accomplished.  The purple will go a bit further and will, I hope, make this chair pad, long enough that I do not have to add another colour.

If 8 balls does indeed make a good size felted chair pad, then it's time to pick out the next batch of colours from the bin of Pallette. 

This next pad will be greens and rosy pinks. The greens are pretty accurate in colour here, but the deeper rosy tones look brown.  

The more I work on these chair pads, the more I can't wait to put them into service.  It's a really nice use of yarn I had no plans for and it uses up a significant amount of it.  For the first time ever, this bin of yarn closes easily.  

Looking ahead? Sure. Why not.

I got to work with the new hook as soon as I posted yesterday.  You know what?  It was awful.

I know!  Not what you expect from a brand new tool.  There was a ridge of rough plastic at the centerline of the hook.  Under the hook and over the tip were the worst.  It was catching on everything.  Luckily Keith had some very fine sandpaper and I could deal with the ridge.  It is about the same as if I had bought the wood hook.  Oh well.  It is what it is and the hook works well enough.  

I spent the afternoon baking.  It's high cherry season and I made a really nice cherry cobbler using an Allrecpies page recipe.  Very tasty and just perfect for these cherries.  I did not pit the cherries, just used them stone in.  They are small this year but plentiful.  It was not worth the hassle of dealing with pits.  When I was a kid, my mom canned the cherries stone in and they weren't a problem.  The cobbler was a winner.

More knitting and crocheting today to be sure, but I really want to get to the sewing room too.  It's time to get that in order so winter projects can begin. Failing that, it could be a good day for a stash dive.  It's chilly today and it makes me think of all the wonderful yarns I could work with for the fall and winter.  

Woe

Quelle disaster.

 

It just snapped.  I wasn't putting pressure on it.  It just snapped.  I stared at it for a few seconds longer than most people would have.  It was so unbelievable that the tool let me down.  It was inconceivable.  

I think I bought these in the 90s when I started making sweaters for myself.  So they are at least 30 years old.  Maybe more.  And old plastic does get brittle.  But I had only this one hook in this size.

Keith stopped at the giant big box in Vegreville to see what they had for replacement.  I am not a fan of hooks with a too thick shift.  My favourites are hooks that are slender and then get thicker.  I also don't like wood hooks.  No slip and I don't like things feeling as if the hook is grabby.  

  

I went with the green 6.5 mm hook and a blue 7 mm hook.   The one that broke was a 6.5 but I had wished for one just a bit larger when I started chair pads.  Next pad will be done with a 7.  The new hooks will be okay.  They feel oddly light in comparison but they are otherwise the shape I prefer.  

I knit most of the day on the Kauni sweater so today I need to get in some good time on the chair pad.  Let's see if I can run out of yarn and need a third colour.  

Knitting!

After a week and more of utter despair health wise, I am feeling a thousand times better today.  It was a much better weekend too so I am going to keep my fingers crossed that this keeps going.

I kept working on my chair pad crochet project.  

And you can see I am actively using my new progress keepers.  It really is keeping me focused forward rather than focusing on what is done and feeling it isn't enough.  Do I wish it was farther along or even finished?  Sure, but the marker is a reality check.  I did make progress and that is enough. 

As I was ready to change colours after the purple, I debated adding a third set of colours.  I would rather use up some balls completely than have a bunch more leftovers.  I really want this bin of yarn used up so I stayed with my wide browns and purples stripes.  I hope that two of each colour will be wide enough to make the size I want before I felt it.  I have a funny feeling though,  that it will be a bit shorter than I want and I will very likely need to add a third colour anyway.  

I didn't want to only work on a very workhorse type project.  I wanted something to raise my spirits.  I was searching for the Hiraeth sweater but found my Kauni sweater first.  

 

  It's stripes which are always fun and it easy on the hands knitting.  I have a couple rows of the Kauni left before I go back to the Tove garter band.  It's nice easy knitting in yarns I absolutely adore. 

The more I knit on this sweater, the happier I am with it.  I love how the colours are working out, though I admit, I took out some of the greyest blue.  There was just too much grey for the middle of the body and I am eager to get to the rich purple and green sections.  

Both of these are my work of the day, though I am also going to work on more pants.  Sewing is good.  Knitting is great and life is a lot better than last week.

Boy the photos on this page are dull.  I need to do something about that.