One last day

One last day.  I spoke with our son yesterday afternoon and you know, if his smile was any bigger, his face would crack right in two.  

This part, this day is much harder for our daughter in law.  Its got to be a tough thing to leave your world behind.  A hundred years ago, many many young Ukrainian men and women did so before her and thrived and I pray that she will too.  But I have no doubt it was a very hard thing to take that last turn at the airport and wave goodbye to her mum and grandma and go through into the secure waiting area at the airport.  

One short flight to Frankfurt, one longer flight to Calgary and then a very short hop home. 

 

Flying time

Right around 5 a.m. on Monday morning, Kiev time, my daughter in law will be getting on a plane to come to Canada.  

I am counting the hours.  

We have waited so long, hoped for so long and by Monday right about 5 p.m. Edmonton local time, she will be here.  

It doesn't sound like much and if you only counted hours in the air, it really isn't.  But, add in a stop in Frankfurt and a shorter one in Calgary and well, check out local time in Kiev right now and you get the idea.  

It is almost as far away as you can go before you get closer again.  

May the weather right across the world be particularly wonderful come Monday, right around the world and make her flight and the flights of anybody flying home, safe and smooth.

I've been waiting all year

Seriously, I have.  I love this video.  Enjoy!

Arrrrrgh

Still knitting.  Need more hours in the day.  48 please.  24 is just not cutting it.

I am thinking a lot about textures these last few days.  It started with lace and moved on to texture when I kept coming across perfect ways to use these two yarns.  

Can't you see it? Pretty green sweater looking like it is overlaid with a net of pretty green multi yarn?  Easy knitting with slipped stitches.  Maybe easy knitting.  I know how this knitting thing goes.  

Looks easy, but there is always a little something tricky about simple in knitting.  I forsee a 'learning' opportunity.

I'm knitting

No real blog today.  Just that I am knitting.

A Merry Christmas from Mr. Bean.  If the add plays, sorry about that.

The good, the bad and the mistake.

I've finished the bind off.  It was long.  Very long.  All that remains of the sweater is to do the cuffs and sew up the short side seams.  

They really should be done by now, but my hands are giving out.  There is just no way I will get the sweaters done before Christmas.  None at all.  I am a little disappointed but it was not going to be do-able unless I was not working and I am, so that is that.

The worst part is I'm pretty sure that Son2's sweater is too small.  As I knit this snuggly warm one of my daughter in law, I realized how much more relaxed it was, how much more easy it was on my hands.  It was needles are so large that they usually make my hands ache, and the thick very thick yarn doesn't help, but still, a much more relaxed knit than the Remix sweater.

Remix is in a weight I prefer and a fibre I love and yet it was not so much fun as it should be - I know this or it would be done.  I think I am knitting it too tightly.  The fabric agrees.  

I went back to my swatch and checked gauge.  I measured the sweater and even though it says it is right, it looks too firm and too ...well, just too.  I want to restart it on slightly larger needles and there is no time to do so, and I am a little heartbroken that it isn't going to be done.  

I might finish it if I didn't take time to decorate the house or book or do any cooking at all, but those things must be done too.    So the deal is I will have two and a half sweaters done before Christmas, but no way will I make 3. 

So an evening devoted to cuffs and sweater 3 down.  Then I will rip back sweater 2 to the ribbing and will restart.  The ribbing will be fine I think, I just need to get more ease into the body fabric and a few more stitches just above.  A softer drapey fabric will make a world of difference.  Maybe the knitting goddesses will bless me and will make the knitting go fast and happy and joyful.  

I'll hope for that. 

Done and done

My daughter in law is now, technically, a resident of Canada.  Even though she has never been here! The papers say she is.  7 days till she arrives. I am so very very happy for both of them.

Meanwhile back at the ranch....

I'm binding off the ribbing.  I worked on it an hour yesterday.  I'm not yet half done. 

I know.  Because it is the outer edge of an almost circle, it needs a good stretchy bind off.  I am doing Jenny's stretchy bind off.  There is no doubt in my mind that this was the right way to go.  It gives just the right finish and it has all the give  I could want.  But because it is ribbing, there is a regular yarn over and a backwards yarn over and I keep getting the two mixed up.  It makes a huge visual difference at this gauge.  

Pretty, pretty.  After the ribbing, there remains only cuffs and two really short seams to call it complete .  I can't wait too see it in alol its glory.  A big snuggly beautiful wrap you up in cozy sweater.

I'm taking it to town today to look for closures. A pin means you could wear it in a dozen ways but there are also some funky closures from Nicki Epstein that would look great.  

I love this stage in knitting things.  It is so close to done, I can taste its goodness.

Well, there you have it

Flights are booked and now we just need to pray that the visa stamping goes as planned and we are home free.

I expect a very busy weekend after all the recent excitement. There is knitting to be done.  There is baking and cooking to be done.  There is some shopping left to do.  Less than I thought till I sat down and started really sorting it out.  I do have to sort out the mom and dad gifts, but that will take a phone call to a sister to know what I need to do.  The biggest shortfall is in the knitting department.  

There is about 1/6th of the secret project left to go, and half of each of two sweaters.  One of those should be finished by the end of the weekend.  The bulky yarn covers a lot of territory quickly.  I anticipate reasonable speed on the other as well.  Being made from the bottom up, it get smaller from here on in.  There will be a small with more stitches on the needles as the sleeves and body are joined, but the raglan shaping will take care of any feeling of tediousness.

I am blessed in the choices I have made.  There is minimal finishing on both of these garments.  The wool one has felted joins as I go and does not have a lot of stopping and starting.  The beginning tail will be used for the short seams, and there shouldn't be much more than another couple of ends.

On the Remix sweater, I am using a technique suggested by a knitting friend and am weaving the ends in as I go.  Its is the same sort of technique that I use when I carry strands along the back for colourwork knitting.  Easy peasy and just a little tidying up of tails to do.  There will be a little bit of sewing and tucking to get the shawl collar set in, but that is about all.  

Little finishing, diminishing number of stitches, few ends.  My kind of knitting!

And just to get you started right...



 My kids loved this once.  

The thousandth time?  Not so much.

This blog should talk

This blog should talk about knitting today.  This blog promised to talk about knitting and only knitting this week.  And this blog was going to talk about knitting when she got out of bed this morning.  This blog was in fact, going to talk about knitting, right up until when she sat down and turned on the computer.

But that blog that I planned to write is gone and there is nothing that I want to tell you except that my daughter in law will be here for Christmas.  

Forgive me for shouting, but 

My daughter in law will be here for Christmas.  

She got the call from the embassy this morning that they want her to bring her passport in and that they will have her visa ready for her by Tuesday.  

I have a lot of knitting, baking and decorating to do!

Wow

Thank you all for the encouragement!  Its nice to know I am not so loopy as I first thought. 

After Christmas, here I come.  

In the meantime, a just a little Christmas modern.

   

Renovating knits

 Way back when, I made a very pretty capelet in one of my favourite colours in a wonderful pure alpaca yarn.

Nice yes?

I loved everything about it.  It knit itself in one weekend...and then lay around for months while I tried a couple different ways to hem it.

I mostly wore it at home.  The clasps were not a good choice of closure for the sort of work I did at the store.  They popped open every time I bent over to get something.  And being alpaca, it was warm, too warm for walking, leaning, lifting, carrying  all day.  It slipped down, down till it was at the bottom of the pile and such a beautiful thing is worthy of far better treatment.

I found a few more balls of this stunning blue when I was digging in the the store room in my last weeks at the store.  That, plus the 3 or 4 skeins I had left from this project, means I have enough to turn my pretty capelet into a rather dainty cardigan.

Wouldn't it be neat if all I had to do was join it at the underarms and keep knitting?  But sadly no.  There would be a little more work to it than that. Still, it is an idea that intrigues me.

Has anybody ever done an afterthought sleeve?  Heard of it before?  No,  me neither.  But you know...

I have to think on it some more.  I suppose it is a good thing there are sweaters to be done for Christmas. What is it that carpenter's say? Measure twice, cut once.  A knitter's afterthought corrolary must be think twice, cut once.

Sheepish

Oh yes there is knitting.

This amorphous gray blob is an entire bag of yarn.  It was zooming along today.  The ribbing that joins the 2 ends is begun and will be ripped.  Yessirree Bob, I spent an hour knitting the ribbing and then suddenly realized I was supposed to change colours.

So the ripping begins on 2 very longs rows, but thanks heaven it wasn't more. It was time for a break anyway.

This might not strike anybody but a knitter as funny, but Thursday evening as I was measuring and knitting, I decided that there was just no way 2 bags of yarn was going to be enough.  So I umm, ordered another bag.  I'm feeling just a little sheepish because I am only into bag 2 by 2 skeins.  

Which, now that I write it out, is a lot less than I calculated originally (before the sheepish bit).  I think I am going to measure it again.  

And again.  Just to be sure.  It said it needed to be 36 inches.  I am pretty sure that is what I have.  

Unless my measuring was way off, there ought to be enough yarn for a whole other sweater with the bag still to come, the left over gray, and the half bag of charcoal I expect to have left from the ribbing and sleeves of this sweater.  Yup right there I can see it.  Plenty for a second sweater.   

I can't tell if I am happy or sad about this.  Sure am feeling sheepish though.  Yup.  That is me.

Organized and ready to go.

I'm starting to get my holiday stuff organized.  

OK.  Maybe I'm overstating the case.  I have the wrapping, just not the gifts.  I need more hours.

In other news, there has been knitting.  But not a lot.  This Saturday I'll be back on the Sweater for the boy.  I think I know what I am going to do.  I'll keep you waiting till after the weekend.  

Just think.  Knitting content next week.  All week.  Everyday!  

Interesting Times

All summer long, I spun with a friend at the library.  Without that, My spinning efforts would have taken years to finish and I would still be handmade yarnless.

I don't have a lot but I do have this:

This bobbin is almost full and there will be one more to ply up before I am done.  

This is the same sinlges I showed once or twice before, now plied and soon ready for knitting.  I'm aiming for a post Christmas finish for it.  I would plan to knit it but I am not sure that it will be something I will want to work with. Time will tell, and I have fallen in and out of love with yarns before.  Who knows what will be.

I'm still not really in love with the colours.  I never was, though there were times, as my spinning friend well knows, when I liked it better  and times when I liked it less.  This morning?  Less.

Let this be a lesson in why one really must love the colours you spin and why I can't look at  fibre in the same way I look at yarn.  

Still it is my first big spinning project.  My first attempt at really fine singles and soon, my first yarn that there will be enough to do something with.  

Will she or won't she

I have to admit I am worried about getting the sweaters done before Christmas.  I'm worried about my other little things getting done before Christmas too.  Still, there are enough hours and I must just be more diligent.  

Diligence has suffered these last few days. I have been thinking a lot of lace and dreaming of shawls and light elegant things I could wear and wrap myself up in, but I think these dreams are interfering with my focus.  I scurry to bed at night to read the lace books I have up there and contemplate what stitch patterns I would use if I was doing my own.  I plan an order of shawls that I would make from among my many books.  But really I should be doing a little more work on what is before me.

To be completely honest, my worry over son 2's sweater and its too shortness is getting in the way.  I am worrying about its size too.  I mean if its too short, it might be too small too, right.   I have lost my faith in the math even though I redid all the numbers and it seems ok.

I think this is part of sweater knitting.  It belongs to the massive middle of a project, the part where it seems like it is taking forever, the part where no matter how much you knit,  it never grows any longer.  Angst lives there.

I do have the other sweater to work on.  I should be knitting my heart out on it, but in a crisis of faith...

The crisis of faith will be done by this evening.  This evening is as much time as it can have.  So, excuse me while I have a bit of a talk with myself.  

Suck it up buttercup.  Get over it.  Move on.  Trust the numbers.  This too is knitting.

Having my priorities straight.

One of the biggest problems I face, that I think many of us face, is trying to find some way to have a good balance between home and work.  My previous office job felt like it took the life out of me and yet it did not, not really.  I am here, I'm still me.  

Working at the yarn store was just a blessing, the blessing of all blessings, so much more fun than anything I had ever done, will ever do or could even dream of doing again but still it was a very one sided way to live.

I have always known that no matter what I do, I want to live in the country, so when we  bought the farm a year ago, I knew that certain things would happen.  I needed to build barns and fences and plant trees and hay.  These things cost money.  A lot of money.  I knew that I would have to find a full time job. 

I did not want it to be at the store.  It would have taken all that I loved and turned it into a job.  I knew office work would be it.  But this time round, temp or not, I am making sure that I find a better balance of working and living.

I have my priorities straight.  I intend to eat my pumpkin pie before my dinner and intend to knit several hours before I go to work.  

Chores? They will happen, when they happen.  I have yet to see the dishes running away with the spoon.

Which always takes me to think of this.  

I've never had to wonder about why I like the little things. If I could have picked, I would have chosen that 'bigger chair for 2 more to curl up in.'  

I was just too tired to post Friday morning.  I just lay there and chatted with Mr. Needles till it was time to go.  Its hard to say how I am doing but I am starting to understand the questions I need to ask.  Its kind of scary and kind of fun!

There was not a lot of knitting during the week, though I think I compensated for it this weekend.  I was really hoping to have the Remix sweater joined a done a little ways up the yoke.  No such luck.  

The giftee was out this weekend and it seems that the arms are not long enough.  He tried the one completed arm on and it ended in that awful miserable place where it is not 3/4 and not nearly full length.   I remeasured him and guess what.  His arm and the sleeve measure to the same thing, 18 inches (from his underarm to wrist) and yet.... Sigh.

 I had not planned to compensate for elbow ease, figuring that over time it would grow just a little longer all by itself.   I'm not really sure what to do.  I did do an additional inch on one sleeve.  I might do more or might not leaving it to fate and post Christmas finishing.  I will think on it a little.  

Then I picked up the sweater for my daughter in law.  Right now it is just a very long piece, knit in stockinette, which will one day, be a square.  I worked on it till my hands simply refused to work the purls any longer. I tried working western style, wrapping and flicking the yarn and I tried to do a regular continental purl instead of my normal combined purl, but my hands were quite done.  They could no longer comprehend the instructions that my brain was sending.

When the brain is no longer capable of sending signals, where do I go?  Why to the kitchen of course.

I finished my day by making some pumpkin pies.  With all the American Thanksgiving stuff on TV, all the ads, all the hype, I have had a hankering for a couple of days now.  They will be done shortly and then, if I tuck one in the freezer to cool, should be just about right to eat before I'm ready go to sleep.  The perfect end to a lovely weekend.

Eeeeeep

Since I am no longer at the yarn store, I signed myself up at a temp agency.  What with one thing and another, I have not been able to take the previous assignments they offered me, but I felt that to refuse the third time would look really bad.  I was kind of hoping the quiet would hold off till after Christmas.

So, I'm now back at work, full time, 5 days a week for the next while. How the heck did that happen?  

Well, it goes like this.  I bought the farm.  Farming produced about the same as it did back in the 80's - it is cash flow, not profit (or in my case, potatoes, not peaches) - and in order pay for the farm, I must work.    

I had a really good time today.  It felt nice to stretch my brain beyond knitting, but much as I love knitting hours and hours a day, I am sitting here, kicking myself, and wondering how on earth am I ever going to get 2 sweaters done before Christmas?

Updated:

Past the bind off for the base of the collar.  I might just keep my target finishing date (end of November) on this one yet.  

Actual knitting stuff

I fobbed you off with photos and blocking the last few days, but today I am proud to report that there has been serious knitting accomplished and I have the pictures to prove it

Its almost long enough.  Just another 3 or 4 rows and it will be time to start the split for the collar.  Then 3 inches after that, I am ready to join the sleeves.  

I've a little more knitting to go on one sleeve.  The other is already done.  

I'm following Brooklyn Tweed's Brownstone pattern. I say following because I am, as ever, not knitting to gauge.  I'm doing my own gauge so that it would work with how I wanted this yarn to knit up.  But the schematics, the brilliance are all Brooklyn Tweed.  I hope he doesn't mind.  

When you do this kind of thing, this loosely following a pattern sort of knitting, you have to have faith in your own massive ability to frog and belief that you won't be doing that any more often than if you were knitting to pattern.  I have a comfortable level of both.  I think.

I'm knitting this with Remix.  I'm quite enjoying it and I feel just a little bad.  I'm sorry about that, Sel and Poivre.  I feel kind of bad that you are not having a good time with Remix, while I am.  But this yarn in plain stockinette?  The boss.  For at least 3 hours a day.  After that not so much.  

I love the way it looks though, and I know the giftee is going to love wearing this.

I still want to own a bag of every colour - maybe 2.  Well at least of the guy colours.  I can see everybody in the family wanting one of these.

Sigh

 I love it when a plan comes together.

I confess, I'm a small shawl wearer.  I love how they fit our modern way of life.  

But I think I am a big shawl knitter.  There has been nothing, nothing that compares to the pleasure of delicately displaying this shawl.  Don't be surprised if there are more pictures.

Again, it is The Fir Cone Square Shawl by Cheryl Oberle, from the book, Folk Shawls.