Of knitting and sweet little people

I've been working on a lot of things over the past few days.  Some of the time, I was working a lot on one thing and other times,  I was prancing all over the place. If I only looked at one project, not  lot would have been done, but when I look at them all, I am so happy I got so much knitting time in!

I did some work on my sweater.  Another couple rows and the yoke is long enough to join at the underarm and begin the long process down the sleeves and body of this simple sweater.  By the time I get to the join, I will have used inches shy of two balls of yarn.  I started with 9 hanks of this wonderful thick yarn and getting this far and having used two hanks worries me a bit.  I am going to do the sleeves next.  Much easier to do them now when you do not have the whole body of the sweater to flip on each round.

If I use more than one skein more for each sleeve, then I will certainly run out of yarn.  The plan for this sweater was, I think to have deep ribbings and long cuffs and a sweeping collar, possibly even a hood, but as it stands, I don't have enough yarn for some of that, certainly not the hood.  An order for two more skeins will probably happen once sleeve one is done and I am sure what my yarn needs will be.

The other things I worked on this weekend was my First Point of Libra shawl.  I am in love with the colour gradient all over again.  As you can see, I've just moved into the third colour of five.  The rows are feeling really long but I am saved by the stuff you have to do on the right side rows.  Always something to track my progress.

I was knitting on this at Baba's Attic this weekend and had several nice comments.  One thing about knitting out and about, people always stop and chat.  People loved the colours.

My hope is to finish this up before the end of the year, which is approaching with great speed.  I am knee deep in Christmas shopping at the moment, and getting the house ready to set up the tree.  The living room has been cleaned furniture moved to accommodate the tree.  The sewing is about half done, and it won't take much to finish up.  Everything is moving along nicely, even with reorganizing my study and fooling around with some stuff for myself.

I played with Baby Emmett, darn he was asleep when the camera was out, (stealing one of mommies photos) but what a little charmer he is.

He loves his bouncy chair and talked an played quite happily in it all day.  My sweetie.

And my peanut!

I finally managed to deliver his hat and scarf.  He loves them both, even though he didn't ask for the hat!   Plus as we were talking he told me that he loved the mittens I made for him last year.  He said he wants to wear them everyday, lol.  He is starting to look more and more like his grandpa that he is named for. He was telling me about Grandpa too, which was so sweet.

My Isaac was with his dad for most of the day, but he came home about supper time and we had time for a good talk.  He is growing up, so chatting with grandma isn't that high on hislist, but we had a god talk and we played silly games like when he was small as he was helping the little boys clean up the toys.   We had a nice movie night, all of us together.  I love that more than almost anything, when there are kids sprawled all over wrapped in blankets, watching a movie and there is popcorn and special treats.  My idea of a perfect way to spend an evening and the perfect way to close off a weekend.

Just lovin it.

A while ago, I started re-working the collar on  a sweater that I started at 3 a.m. one morning and had just a leeeeetle too much fun knitting short rows at the neck line.  the collar and shoulders were forced to sit oddly and I seldom wore it out of the house.

Original above and

massacred. 

My original plan was to take out the excess short rows and graft but that just got weird.  It ended up being much cleaner and easier by far,  to take the collar completely off and reknit to the top, finishing off with a new collar.

I knit the shoulders to a regular shoulder and did a three needle bind off.  Probably ought to have done the bind off to the inside but oh well.

  

Much much better.  No weird excess at the back of my neck and the collar more or less sits as it does in the original design.  And no one, not even me, I looked, will see the place where the stitches are half off in the ribbing because of the change of direction of knitting.

I wore it out yesterday and will again today.  Used to be I loved this sweater in spite of its flws.  Now I just love this sweater.

Party on

I'm still not feeling very good and tomorrow is the tenth day.  What was that about cold viruses being gone in 10 days?  I'm still headachey and feel like life is in slow motion and I don't care enough to go out and grab it.  Maybe after my coffee? (Yes, the coffee did work on the headache.  Guess I have to cold turkey coffee again.  sigh)

I did start working on the Pup Badge for Marcus sweater.  I didn't get as far as I hoped but I can tell that a good day or two and it will be done.  The only limitations are my eyes and the light.  It needs to be worked on in the full light of day, that is certain. 

So, there will be some knitting but you know what I really feel like?  A good dive in my stash.

I love my stash.  I love these beauties and I love the plain stuff too.  I love the crispy, crunchy stuff and the softest cashmere stuff.  I love the handspun and the millspun and the giant commercial entity spun. I love the commercial dyes and the hand dyes. I love the thin stuff and the bulky stuff and everything in between.  It makes me feel like I have something to knit on for.  I will knit on, do on, work on, just for the chance to play with these gorgeous things.

Just looking at pictures of pretty yarns is giving me the energy to go on this morning. On to all the little things that have fallen by the way side this last few days.  There is laundry.  Again.  Dishes.  As ever.  Sweeping the floors.  

Okay, I don't mind this last but when you have rugs, ignoring everything that falls to the floor is so much easier to ignore.  (I will never ever live with rugs again).  You never put floors on the ignore list with hard floors.  Everything just follows you, stuck to your socks. It sounds gruesome but here, what is stuck to your socks is threads from the sewing corner, tiny bundles of wool that pilled off sweaters and trimmings from whatever project you were knitting two weeks ago.  And the occasional grapevine bit from when the kids were here just before your cold and the odd cheerrio from the time they were here before that.  And that is after you ran around with your little wonder vacuum (but did not move your furniture. )

So lots of ordinary going on around here today.  But after lunch, when the general days chores are done...Party in the wool closet.  You are welcome to come play with me if you dare. 

 

Book or Pattern

Days never seem to get where I thought they would go when I write the blog post.  I probably ought to be writing in the evening so I do not so often end up planning as I write and deliver nothing.  I originally wrote in the very early morning, and then as my work changed started writing in the evenings and in the aftermath of 2013, went back to evening writing.  There really isn't any difference in the long run,I suppose.  There are always days where the day is gone and there isn't a lot to show for it but it is something to think about.   

With my tension finger cut in the worst possible place and with the additional irritation of my cold, to say that things have been sluggish would be putting it mildly.  Knitting time is way down this week.  On the upside, sleeping and napping is going much much better.  Napping has been particularly wonderful.  

But following through with a plan has not happened. It will, but not yesterday.

This morning, I got up a bit late and I am not feeling particularly pressured to do anything so my mind is wandering through things I want to knit on Ravelry.  

I keep coming back to Kate Davies this morning.  I was thinking bout my yarns from my summer trip and about the Harrisville I have on cones for her Myrtle sweater.     I took a look at the book and realized that I have at least four other things from that book in my favourites.  I stopped counting at four.  There may be more.  

So now I am debating book or just one pattern.  A digital book doesn't take much space but I don't like to have patterns sitting around that I won't knit.  

So that is my conundrum this morning.  The debate rages.  Book or Pattern.

Woolgathering: indulgence in idle fancies and in daydreaming; absentmindedness

I think I mentioned it before, that besides my regular blue pair of glasses, I have a different pair of glasses for using by my computer and I use a different pair of glasses when I am watching TV from my bed in the evenings.   My computer glasses are the best lenses by far and more and more, I wear them all around the house.  My clearest vision of all is no glasses and just holding stuff close.  

This morning, I was in my room and noticed that my regular glasses were by my computer.  I wasn't wearing glasses at the time, so yay me, for seeing them at all.  I put them on and thought I better go get my computer glasses and put them by the computer before I forgot. I often toss my glasses beside me on the table or on a footstool when I am reading my tablet and assumed I had done this.  I could not find them in the livingroom.  I looked in the kitchen. I went back to my bathroom.  Might I have left them there, having taken them off to clean them?  And then I found them...right on the top of my head.  

I am not going to hold out much hope for today. 

But then again, there is coffee.  There is a crisp morning out there that I can easily avoid by simply staying at home and I did see my blue glasses on top of my black computer case without any glasses on at all.  Maybe it's a winning day after all.

While I wasn't doing much knitting, I have been sorting out a small problem Maybe a big problem.  But it was a problem that has completely stopped work on the Chase sweater.  

The pocket is the problem.  It isn't large enough to do a duplicate stitch badge.  The badge is a shield with a star inside and there simply are not enough stitches do do the details.  I do so want to give Marcus what he wants.  And a full pup badge is what he needs.  I am sure he would tell me this with such a look of supplication which I couldn't turn away from.  You know how it is.  Little boy eyes and little boy dreams.  

As I was sorting out my shelves yesterday, I kept shifting this large roll of tear away stabiliser I have.  I set it down on top of my box of embroidery threads once, and it hit me, that what I needed was an embroidered patch sewn to the pocket.  I could get the details on the badge much more easily and more crisply on fabric than on yarn. I might have a bit of the right blue fabric to do the work on, but if not, the patch could be fully embroidered, covering a plain white fabric.  The stabiliser will keep it all nice and firm while I work. And a little plus for Marcus, Grandma can use the grey he told me not to forget around the edge of the shield. I didn't have yarn to do that in duplicate stitch.  I was planning to just use yellow but now all bets are back on!

So today, I have some embroidery to do and in case you are wondering, that is glasses off kind of work. First place I am looking for them later is the top of my head.      

  

Almost human. Still knitting.

There were lots of reasons to reorganize my study, one of which was to make a better knitting space.  A livingroom is a more communal space, a shared space, and sitting there in the evening makes me feel alone so usually, by 7:30, I come into my study to read.  

Audiobooks that is.  Most of my books are audiobooks these days.  It is a different kind of reading to paper book reading or ebook reading.  I never really thought about a book as a delivery method till my friend told me to read the graphic novel, The Arrival, I think it was, to explain a graphic novels power.  Read it once.  Never forgotten it.  That is the marker of a great story, told in a different way. I have explored audiobooks longer, though till the Arrival, I always felt that audiobooks weren't as good an experience of a story as a good old fashioned bound paper book.  The Arrival woke me to the different experience I was having from the same story on paper, as an ebook and as a well read audio book.  Each delivery method adds a different sort of nuance to the story, and for those special books, where I have read them paper and ebook,and listened to them as an audio book, an entirely special depth to what I take from the story.  But audiobooks are where I usually end up in the evenings.  It's a friendly voice telling me a story and keeping me company as I travel through where ever the story goes.

I usually read in my study because it is separate, and closed from the stuff of the day.  I escape here into a book much as I always did.  And now, there is a really comfortable little knitting chair here

and a tidy corner to sit in and read and work.  I always had a chair in here, but it just wasn't right somehow.  

I saw it and used it more as a sewing chair.  It's  really great sewing chair, and it is great for spinning, but it wasn't a relaxing chair, and evenings in my study, listening to books is about relaxing.  

I looked at a lot of chairs before ending up back at my favourite place Ikea. I looked at used, but honestly, I like to have things that work together.  It has always made me feel less combobulated with the world if I had things that could be just so. I saw some great rose coloured swivel rockers that would have been perfect knitting and reading chairs but my room isn't rose coloured and it isn't roses.  It's yellow and dandelions. I tried out 4 different yellow chairs but this one won the day, mostly because the back is exactly the right height if I want to rest back and have a little nap.  I just have to tilt my head and it is there.  This one also took the day because it feels small, though it is a full size chair.  

Sunday evening, in an effort to begin as I mean to go on, even though the study was still a mess, I decided to start a knitting project just for here.  For now at least.  It's probably going to move around with me later.

I have long been wanting to make something special for my daughter in law Amy's mom.  She loves a blanket that I knitted for Scott many years ago.  It is her blanket when she is over there.  

Me too.  Its just so wonderfully dense and deep.  The yarn is Comfort Chunky and I have some in my stash.  Her husband is not a wool fan, not even close, so this is the perfect yarn for her.  But not a blanket, a shawl, big and warm to snuggle in when she is watching TV as her day winds down, but also for snuggling when she is out camping with her all kids grandkids, including the ones we share.  

I knew exactly what I wanted to make for her, Study Hall from Knitty.  I love everything about this pattern and it is really perfect for knitting here in my study, listening to books or watching something.  It's body is a lot of garter stitch but there are sweet little details right from the start.  

 

It is the perfect knitting compliment to Miss Marple, as I work through all the stories as audio books and the TV series of her stories, Joan Hickson, Geraldine McEwan, and Julia McKenzie.  If I could find them all, I would watch all the Miss Marples ever made.  Garter stitch with a little twisted stitch right at the spine.  Isn't that just the most perfect Miss Marpleish knitting?

Tuesday is usually my spinning and errand day, but no spinning for me today.  There isn't any point in spreading this miserable cold.  I am starting to feel a bit more like a human though and coffee tastes really good.  I may live through this yet.  

Almost human.  Still knitting.  Reading and watching Miss Marple.  Sounds like a good day to me.    

     

The remainders

It was not a weekend where any forward movement happened at all.  I developed a cold, I cut my yarn tensioning finger right where it matters, and I hd an overnight guest. The guest was great, but the rest not so much.  It wasn't a knitting weekend, but I am pretty pleased with what I got done on Friday.

This is what I have chosen for shawl storage. Basic Trones shoe storage.   Each 'box' is separate so you have an infinite number of ways you hang these to use.  These tidy shallow boxes don't impede the doorway at all and it puts my shawls where I can get to them quickly and easily.  I'm already wearing a greater variety of shawls day to day! I have to get the photos hung properly but otherwise this corner is done.

They do indeed store all my shawls nicely.  Over time, I am going to replace the ziplocs with cloth bags for storage.  I would much rather have the shawls in bags that breathe plus fabric won't puff with air over time so there will be room for many more shawls.  

And my sewing corner.  Thursdays project is still there waiting on the table for it's final finishing, mostly trimming of the threads, but the furniture is all in place.  I've tucked my yarn cabinet right in the corner.  It finishes up that nice much brighter space wonderfully.

That is the biggest change.  This part of the room is so bright and airy where before, it was dominated by the dark overfilled bookcases.

The shelves make much more sense here.  I had to set them  healthy inch away from the air vent behind them, but even so, it just feels right.  I have a bit more work to do on these.  I put stuff on the shelves but I did not organize them.  Ideally, this storage would be deeper shelving, deep enough for all my boxes, with doors on it to hide the full load the shelves carry but I have these old stacked Billy shelves so I will find a way to make it work.  My current plan is to extend a sturdy curtain rod out from the shelves so the curtain hangs properly straight.  I'm not sure how high the curtain will go but the goal is to close off the busy storage and leave only the books and a pretty box or two open up top. 

I still have a few boxes to fill with things.  Most of the stuff here has to go into the white boxes you can see just behind my new knitting chair. 

And those boxes will be tucked right beside the shelves in a nice tall ordered stack.  Sock yarn bits in one, handspun yarn in another, singles that need finishing, left over ends of yarns that are not sock yarn. That is the kind of thing that is going in these boxes.

There are a few things that I will move out to my spare room to finish up, but only things that are for processing wool. The goal here for my bedroom/study/sewing room is to create a more restful place, an airier, more open area to sit in, more accessible, one that better fits the way I am using this space.  

When I watch those home shows where a designer is making a craft space for the owners and I see them choose a few pretty looking bits to display on elegant shelving above an uncluttered desk, I laugh.  I laugh at them and I laugh at me, because boy oh boy, in a perfect world...  Reality is never like that.  My reality is messier and stuff never fits so elegantly as I would like. It doesn't mean that the things that support what I do, need to overwhelm.   

Right now, I am going to have a nap (See above and cold) but by the end of the day, all these little remainder tasks will be done, this room will be much more relaxing and I will be sitting pretty, knitting.

Along with the sewing yesterday, I did manage to finish, or almost finish the Chase sweater. 

While I did not use up all of the yarn for the sweater proper,

there is not enough left to make the pocket, unless it was miniscule.  I'm glad I have another skein.

I am really pleased with this wool.  It's a lovely feeling as it runs through your hands.  Plus it says superwash, though by superwash, they mean wash in cold water in a machine on gentle and tumble dry on low. 

I have a bit more sewing and then some work on my room to do today.  My sewing is in my bedroom /study.  The way I have it set up right now, you have to walk through the area you are sewing in, to do anything in the room and I want to change that.  Beside all the small bits of thread from sewing, which seem to end up on the floor as often as not, the whole study part of my giant bedroom often ends up kind of ramshackle, like a junk drawer gone astray.  It is kind of a pain to get to the shelves to put stuff back so it ends up on the chair, the small table, the floor.   It's like a cascade failure, and pretty soon the effects of the disorder are everywhere.  Contrary to popular opinion, I really hate that.  I hate that I let it happen (because I do) and I hate having to tidy it up to do anything in that space.

But never enough that it starts me doing it properly in the first place.  I am a tougher nut than that to crack.  It's like I have to trick me. Putting stuff away properly is not just about having room for it, but about having the storage easy to get to as well.

I am moving my sewing to the wall currently occupied by my bookcase, and moving the bookcase to the walk through area.  If I can get to the bookcase easily, particularly when there is no where to set it when I am in a rush but in its proper place, I stand a much better chance of avoiding the cascade failures. 

Another part of this plan is to be able to use my knitting chair for actual knitting.  First off, my other chair really wasn't as comfortable as I hoped.  I got a new knitting chair, but it is stuck in the way of the wool closet doors.  I want to move it to a nice natural position with a good view of my audio visual set up.  It has become a habit to sit in my desk chair because my knitting corner is not angled to see the screen. I end up scrolling the internet rather than knitting while listening to books or internet courses. The desk chair is not conducive to knitting and isn't what I call comfortable.

I also have a solution to my shawl storage problem that needs to be installed.  I ended up going with a thing Ikea designed for shoe storage, the Trones cases.  I needed something narrow with  a door to contain unruly bags of shawls and these fit the bill.  They will hang on the wall in my dressing area, ready for me to reach easily, anytime without intruding on anything else. 

It's a bit of a job with a good cleaning of the whole room attached.  Big job, busy day plus a pocket to knit and embroider. Time to get moving.

That thing we should talk about but don't.

I'm doing some sewing again today.  That's because it took me hours to cut out the project into all its small component parts and it took forever to put all the pieces into their proper order.   The sewing is about as simple as I have ever done but it uses up a lot of thread.  It's all zig zag but for the closures and it seemed to suck up thread like there was no tomorrow.  I'm going to use up some of this.

All those pretty colours from old projects are perfect for this project.  What am I sewing you may ask? Well, if you are of tender years avert your eyes, though, really, you shouldn't. Move along if you are squeamish, though you really shouldn't be.  Long ago when we lived in communities with grandmothers in the same homes, we would have known of these kinds of things without needing to talk about them.  But we should be talking about them, so that none of us has to feel this is all so undignified.  It's life.  Get over it.  I am sewing some incontinence pads. 

I have to start at the beginning.  I had three kids.  I had a hysterectomy.  I am 60.  All these things combine to mean that my bladder is not supported any more by the tendons, structures and muscles that support it when you are younger, have not had kids, have not had that surgery.  Occasionally, I leak.  One third of all women will in some measure or other.  Many men will have the same problem as they age.  It isn't uncommon.  For years it was a mere irritant and was handled well by the average pad from the woman's products aisle.  Several years ago, I switched to specialty products. 

In the specialty product aisle the choices are few.  One brand causes me to itch.  Just imagine that for a while.  Yeah.  The product I preferred is very, very hard to find on store shelves in the proper length and  absorbency.  The newest product on the market is also a very occasional find.  You can find liners, that are not sufficient in my case and the other end of the scale, full on briefs and adult diapers. The supply of goods is even worse now that I am in  smaller center.  

More and more, the makers of the product are advertising full panty products and not a lot else. These seem to be available all over, but they are expensive and only available in small packages.  You could take out the cost of new panty's from your budget.  You wouldn't be needing those, but the throw away undergarments would costs thousands of dollars per year and because good quality undergarments don't need replacing daily or more often, you only get that small discount once.  Thousands of dollars.

I got cranky.  I get cranky about a lot of things where we are being sold something that manufacturers have decided we need.  You have white teeth?  Ever cared before dentists and ads told you your teeth weren't white?  No.  You cared that they were clean.  You did not invent the idea that teeth should be perfectly white, they did.  I got cranky about manufacturers who have decided I ought to spend big bucks that I don't have on a product I will toss out a couple times a day.  

As my grandchildren were coming into the world, I started thinking about cloth diapering in the modern way, with the sweet little diaper covers in waterproof fabric.  I was talking to a lady I know about her grandmother and problems with incontinence and I started wondering about adult incontinence products.  Some research on the internet led me to very large and active community using cloth pads for their monthly flow which led me to some great videos by a lady named Amy Nix, who actually addresses the issue and for which I am very grateful.  

See?  Done with simplicity and intelligence and dignity and done well.  If you are my age and younger, we are so used to the throw away product that too often we don't think about what women, people did before.  If you are like me, you have to be hit hard in the head, or the pocket book before you even dream that there might be another way to do these things.  But I was (hit hard in the head) and with encouragement from some pretty great people out there in the world (they know who they are),  I have become part of that community.

I purchased my goods from Diaper Sewing Supply in the spring and made some prototypes but my vacation put the project on hold for a while. When I got home from vacation, I got myself kitted out but found that life would be easier if I had a few more.  If you are using the pads for a few days a month, you need fewer than if you are using them every single day.  Life was becoming about the regularity of laundry, so this week, I am sewing more.  

I did look at Canadian suppliers for PLU fabric, and for wicking material.  There is a very good diaper supplier out of Quebec, Agrumette  that sells diapers and other things ready made, but also sells the supplies.  I will link direct because it is a bit hard to find the supplies on their site.  Fabricland has some but has only the most simple of  wicking supplies in their baby area.  I was really disappointed by that, but c'est la vie.  

If anyone has any questions about anything I have talked about today, please do not hesitate to contact me at canadian needles (one word) at yahoo dot canada (the short form) and I would be happy to assist if you see me out and about in the world.  

Switching over to this has been life changing and what makes me infinitely happier, has freed my limited income.   My savings will cheerfully be diverted to yarn.      

Saving this in case I need it.

Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.
Margaret Atwood 

From the Ridiculous to the Sublime.

If yesterday's post could fall into the category of idiotic, today's post would fall into the category of sublime.

I did have to go pick up some more of the Berocco Ultra Wool for Marcus's sweater and now that I know River City has Plotulopi, I stopped to see what they had for a really dark.  They had black and while that wasn't the only dark colour they had, it was the only way to get the contrast I want, without introducing yet another colour.  I also took the time to have a good look around the store.  For a good long while. Which can be dangerous.

I love yarn and I know that a yarn store is a challenging and sometimes dangerous place to be in.  I prepare.  I promised myself one small treat.    One small treat could be small dollars or rather more than I wanted to spend but in this case the small treat choice was easy because that is exactly what it is.  Small.

 

Lang's Lace.  Isn't that lovely?

A lot of people assume mohair is prickly and will make the itch, but I think that is in part due to the very poor quality of mohair that we had available for many years.  This is just so fine, finer even than the Shibui mohair, which is so much finer than the Rowan KidSilk Haze that it takes your breath away.  

I fell for none of that.  I fell for it's tiny size.  Because cute is as cute does.

When I finally got home, all my parcels and things in tow, I found that my package from Custom Woollen Mills had arrived.  My favourite things!

What a wonderful day!

Only I won't be knitting any of that.  I have a sleeve and pocket for a Chase sweater to knit and a couple amulets.  More than that though, some sewing fabric arrived yesterday too and is demanding my attention or rather, I was waiting for this for a rather long time, and now that it has arrived, I must deal with it.  There is always tomorrow. 

Here Come Da Fuzz

I am sitting while my company is out for a  walk and was cleaning off a sweater to wear.

It's not a very happy thing to be doing but if I want to wear the sweater, it needs to be done.

And time to go.

Of Sweet Dreams, Amulets and a Blue Sweater.

By Friday evening, I was doing the ribbing on the Chase sweater. And Saturday, I took it out and knit a much longer body.

A certain someone

and his sister

 

came for a sleepover.  I held the sweater up to Marcus and while it would have fit right now, it wouldn't have made it to Christmas.  His mom told me he is eating big right now, so I expect extra sleeping and then jumps in growth will follow shortly as is the way of children.    

My house is a minor but friendly disaster.  Lego bricks are everywhere, there are toys drying in the bathtub and crayons, markers and colouring books have taken command of the living room floor.  But the sweater will fit Marcus for a good long while to come.  

Sleeve one is just begun.

My work today is going to involve a call to the yarn store to see if they have another skein of blue.  The added inches on the body have taken me right out of my safety zone for yarn consumption and I think I am going to need another half a skein of yarn.  I will know for certain by lunchtime and the end of sleeve one.

I was also informed that the badge needs to go on the side of the chest, not the center and that my plan for the badge was good. He likes the idea of a pocket for his stuff.  I am glad that he came while this was under construction.  From the start, this sweater has been really important to him and I am glad he can tell me exactly what he wants.

Marcus is growing up.  Do you know how I know?  He has never been a real lover of water.  He would play on the beach but he was not a big fan of lake, river, or bathtub.  He liked the spray park but not the spray.  The last time the kids came to the spray park here, he was running through the spray and this time, when it was bath time, he tried the bubbles in uncle's tub and as he told his dad, he wasn't scared and he poured water on his head too.    

Marcus and Cassie have had sleepovers here a few times now.  The first two times were very hard for them and for grandma.  First one and then the other couldn't get to sleep and they would wake with dreams in the night.  The last couple have been much better.  Marcus dreamed of Paw Patrol mountain rescue toys and Cassie dreamed of amulets to keep the bad things away, just like the story from Faerie Knitting. (Grandma has amulets to knit today) The first little footsteps  I heard were at 7 a.m.  We all had good sleeps.   

Because of  good sleeps and sweet dreams and, well, coffee, I am up and about today and feeling ready for whatever the day tosses my way.  Sleeves and amulets, here I come.  

Paw Patrol two or is it three?

Last week, when I went out to an Oktoberfest dinner, I took the opportunity to stp on the west side at River City Yarns and as usual,found exactly the right thing.

The blue yarns that I dyed for Marcus' Paw Patrol Chase sweater were not quite as close as I wanted in color.  You could see striping where there were  two rows of colour in the yoke.  Once I had joined the yoke fronts it wasn't so bad.  I could change on each row and it seemed to be working okay, but it made the knitting go very slowly.  I really wanted to finish the sweater in these pretty hand dyed skeins and colours, but it was taking forever and I wasn't having fun.

I voted for worsted yarn if I could find a superwash blue and yellow, when I stopped.  And I did.

This is Berocco Ultra Wool.  The right blue and a nice yellow in stock in exactly the right amounts.  What a relief. 

Once I got the set up rows complete, the thing just zoomed along.  I took a break to chart out the little badge that the pups wear, but I didn't like the way it was knitting up in the sweater, so I took it out and decided to follow my first option.  I am going to knit the badge on a small pocket.  I can play around with the way I will make the badge a bit, without setting progress of the whole sweater back.  Once I have a badge and pocket I like, I will mount it center front at proper badge height.  Marcus can keep his glass cleaning cloth in the pocket and grandma might even get him a new one to take to school.  

All my little boys are in school but for Emmett.  They are growing like weeds.  

Incidental Minutes

Hidden among the errands of the last couple days, there has been knitting. It never was very much and it always seemed to take a backseat to the usual tasks of life.  The interesting thing about knitting is that all those incidental minutes add up and before you know it, you have a thing done.

I have two.  I finished Carter's hat.

The hat is, once again just a two row stripe, and the hat pattern is from Ann Budd's A Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns.  I love the way this design decreases.  It is just the best hat.  I've knit it in a relatively firm twisted one by one rib so that the 4 year to adult small will fit the head of a growing boy.

I am so glad this is finished.  I was a bit worried that I wouldn't persevere.  I never noticed it so much working on his scarf, but on the scarf I was using some short straight needles.  On the hat I was back to my usual circulars and pointy ones at that.  The pointy tip of the addis versus the much more rounded tips of my straight needles made a huge difference in the misery of this yarn.  It took the experience of it from nice on the metal straights to oh my goodness, I can't wait till it is done on the hat.  It made a relatively soft yarn splitty and miserable and almost torturous. 

It wasn't a good match of yarn and needles. I did debate switching to birch or bamboo needles, but my tension would have changed and by the time I hated it, I was too far along to change. I made myself work on it a couple rows every time I sat down to knit on other things and in no time at all, misery or not,  it was done.  

Carter did not ask for a hat, but I am going to tell him that if he doesn't want to use it, maybe his mom could help him find a little boy or girl who could use it.  There is always a need for hats and scarves and other winter things and schools and churches almost always have donation boxes.  It's a good thing for a little boy to learn to give.

All that fussing and moderate stress made a sock the only other thing I knit this week. It is showing progress and results from steady work.

 Funny how that happens (cough, cough)  Sock one, complete.  

And that is the round up on my last couple days work.  I could tell you about the other things I did but you know what? 

Life is too short to think about those things.  I am going to sit back and plan for the next project.  There is a world of options of interesting things to knit out there, and I have a ton of really nice yarns to knit them in.  Sweater?  Shawl?  What will it be?  I can spend hours thinking and debating on the merits of either.  And what yarns?  Answering that will need a quick trip through the stash.   Then winding.  And then being ready to cast on. 

I love this part of knitting, always a new adventure waiting for me.  

 

A Boodle Tale

I made coffee today.  It felt right with what I am thinking of this morning and I feel more awake than I have all week.  Beyond a doubt, I am addicted, but I am still going to try to cut back.  Just not today.

I have to tell you a story today, as I sip my coffee.  It is the way I started my day for many years, on a virtual porch, drinking my coffee, listening to news, telling jokes and stories and talking of the vagaries of this world.  It is a story of the boodle.  What is a boodle, you might ask?  If you have been here a long time, you may recall me mentioning them, but if not here goes.

Back in the dark ages of the Internet, before Facebook, back when you commented on forum posts, and bulletin boards, back when commenting on newspaper articles was just beginning, I became a commenter on a Washington Post newspaper blog written by journalist and writer, Joel Achenbach.  Something different happened in that comment section and a bunch of random people from all over North America became something so much more than random commenters.  We became friends and shared stories of life and family and work and books, bonding over our enjoyment of a writer's work. We were and remain unique in the history of newspaper blogging.  Joel Achenbach is unique among writers because he became part of it and was saddled with a Kit and Kaboodle (as in 'whole kit and kaboodle'), or in short, a boodle.  

Forward something close to fifteen years, and many of us are still in regular contact through email and through facebook and when we can, we do try to get together as I did on my adventures to the east this past summer.  

From out of the blue, one of them sent me a random gift and I am utterly charmed and touched by his kindness to think of me. 

I had seen this book hit the pre-orders at Amazon.  Most of the books that I buy these days are digital or audio.  Only rare reference type knitting books make it to my library.  My friend thought of me because he knows I knit rabidly, because that happened in full view of my  boodle buddies.  I became known for minor obsessions with curling, legumes, and knitting and hopefully not for the dumber things I may have said. I rarely get books for gifts and they are treasured when I do get them.  This one certainly will be.  More than that.  It will be shared with my grandchildren.

In a way, the knitting in this book, Faerie Knitting, written by novelist Alice Hoffman and her niece, Lisa, is incidental to the stories. In exactly the same way, the stories are incidental to the knitting.  You cannot tell which came first, knitting or story. They are inseparable.  And they charm me.  They have the feeling of Hans Christian Andersen about them.  Evil remains a force in these worlds but our hero ends protected.  Something knitted is part of that resolution, sometimes a thing that is done, sometimes a gift but always part of how resolution is found.  They are the perfect kind of stories for a grandmother who love stories and knitting to share.

I will knit from this book and think of the many ways you can become friends.  I will wear a shawl and make a blanket and knit tiny amulets and think of the boodle and how lucky I am to be one of them. I will think fondly of them with each story and every cup of coffee.

Thank you Bob, for thinking of me.  What a lovely gift.

Vanilla Reversed. Neat.

If I had to put one word to yesterday, it would be sleep.  I'm trying to cut down my coffee intake during the week, to see if it would make a difference to my sleeping habits.  It isn't that I cannot get to sleep, it is that I wake through the night and have difficulty slowing my mind to get back to sleep.  I don't really feel an overwhelming urge for morning coffee so it isn't a really big deal, but what is striking is the daytime sleeping on no coffee days.  If I was not retired, this would be much harder.  When I say sleep, I don't mean napping either.  I mean full out sleeping.  I slept for three hours yesterday afternoon and it did not affect my sleep overnight either. 

It should also be stated that I'm not stopping coffee.  I love my coffee.  I am just trying to cut back to one cup a day.  But some days, I end up not having any.  

Still there was knitting.  And it was kind of fun knitting.

I was at the point on my Vanilla Reversed socks where it was time to sit down and face the pattern to figure out the heel.  Only to call it  heel that you have to figure out isn't really what is going on.  What you are actually doing is making the gusset. I had to work through it couple times before I got it.  It was a huge help to have all the projects and pictures on Ravelry.  When the written word didn't want to penetrate the thick walls of my skull, the photos eked their way in and finally it all made sense. sense. It wasn't like what was going on when I did my first heel turn.  Nothing so earth shattering.  It was more like what happens in lace.

In lace, the pattern writers write a repeat of lace at the point where the lace stitches actually do repeat.  They often will put markers there and all the counts will logically flow from that point to point B to point C.  I get that.  BUT  my brain needs to sort slightly differently. My brain sorts in a P Q F kind of way, a more ripples on the pond way of thinking but once my brain starts to see written directions  in a way that works for it, it flows along wonderfully well.  

That's kind of what happened here.  It took me three tries for the first set of rows and then suddenly it was all just right and it flew quite merrily along.

This sock is really quite clever without being difficult.  If you are a true pattern follower, you will like this, or if you are like me and have to sort  of come to understand where the designer is going, you will like this.  It is just a slightly different sort of  way of getting around the heel.  I will  use it again where I know that the socks are for me.  It won't replace my best afterthoughts and their flexibility, but it will have a place.  

So that was my whole day.  That and sleeping/napping/dozing.  Today is different.  Today is errands and spinning. I'm excited for this today.  It's mid project and I can't wait to show you!

Productive in a Different Way.

It is just one day for all my weekend reporting this time.  I had company again this weekend, though they did not come till after dinner Saturday and they left Sunday morning, it gave me an excuse to tidy up my house a bit.  And, weirdly enough, my laundry is all caught up.  Last load to old is in the dryer.  So...here I sit with a tidy house, no laundry and nothing serious to do.  

On Sunday I did a little of this and a little of that.

I worked on Carter's hat. I need about 4 more inches of hat before I can decrease for the crown.  That will give him a nice fold back brim and double the warmth at his ears.

I worked on a new plain sock.  This is a yarn and some needles I picked up on a quick stop to River City last week. The debate is still out if I really like the needles.  They are better than 8 inch dpns and they beat magic loop all to heck, but I am just not sure if I like them so well as dpns.

I took my Vanilla is the New Sock Reversed sock to the point where I have to read the pattern.

We shall see how that whole 'read the pattern' thing goes.

I worked on plarn.  

I don't use bags for groceries anymore, but we still get a few coming in.  I am plarning it up by making loops of it and stringing it together to make stuff like mats.  I feel a bit like I have become my grandmother and matron aunts here by doing so, but I hate to see it just go to the dump.  Plarning always makes me sad because I am reminded of the yogurt I love and how I have cut back my consumption of it to only rarely because it comes in tubs of class 5 plastic, which is not locally recyclable. 

And then, in much cheerier things, I transplanted my Bizzy Lizzie and some seedling pansies. 

I have some fabric to cut to start a Christmas project, but with an otherwise open morning, I think I am going to do the footman repair on my S51 wheel and see if I cannot get some plying done.  I  sat down and sorted through my spinning stuff last week.  I have a box for completed yarn and a box for things that are ready for plying.  The plying box is overfull.  Besides, I want to ply the single that I spun in the grease at WWSIP day.  I can't wait to see what happens when it is plyed and finished.  

It was a different weekend than last weeks very productive one and productive but in a different way.  

Goofing off

I am going out to dinner today, and that changes everything about what I plan to do today.  It means I can slack off and be lazy, like starting this post late.   Not that it matters but going out this evening means the afternoon is busy getting ready to go out and leaving early enough to get through rush hour Friday traffic and make it to the venue on time.  That means the only time I will get any serious stuff done today, is this morning.  I can knit during dinner, but I only expect to be working on socks.  There will be beverages beyond coffee and that rather restricts what I am capable of knitting well.  I do not sip and knit even when at home.  In company, indulging in beverages would be a dismal failure, kind of like that time I did short rows at 3 a.m. 

So today, I am working on this little thing.

I finished Carter's scarf yesterday.  I have tons of yarn left.  I only used half of what I bought.  Still it is better than running out.  Carter did not ask for a hat, but I have the yarn, and hats take so little time.

I am using the basic hat from Ann Budd's A Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns.  This book has a bit of everything.  Mittens, hats, a sweater, a vest, all in multiple sizes and multiple gauges.  It was the first of these marvelous books from her.  I keep going back to them over and over and over again, because they just work.  If you don't have any of her Knitter's Handy books in your knitting library, you may want to ask yourself why, resolve to fix that and then get them all.  Because you need them.

This little hat is being made in the same way as I made the scarf, a 1x1 rib.  Carter, being 4 and halfway to 5, is in that place between sizes. I could do a hat up to 4 years or the hat, 4 years to adult small.  I chose the latter.  Carter is only going to grow, and this hat can grow with him.  By doing a 1 x 1 ribbing, I get a fit that will ease up in size as he grows but that will fit snugly now when he is still very small. I am hoping that the ribbing will also keep the hat fitting closely.  This is acrylic and I've never done a hat in acrylic and I worry about it, without the bounce back of wool.

Carter is still a small boy being 4.  It isn't a great age at all, even though being 4 is significant to 4 year olds.  Small is relative.  Isaac in grade four is not really small any more but he has a ways to go till he is a teenger.  Carter, ever my peanut, is smaller, and my wee Emmett is small but growing like a weed and is I am sure, quite determined to catch up.       

Look at my boys!  I've stolen this photo from mom's photo stream and I am not at all ashamed to do so.  Makes my heart melt.  

Making it to Thursday with Weekend Adventures

I talked about my favourite old sweater a few weeks ago.

I knit it in 2010 and it has been worn in steady rotation since then. More than.  It was a favourite. This past year, it was worn  bit less because it was, sadly, showing its age.

Some of the strands and the underarm and down the side were starting to look pretty sketchy.  I debated doing a duplicate stitch repair but it would have been long,  all the way down the arms and body.  And then, there was this.

At some point in the last few months, the sleeve was torn on the dishwasher.  I am sure it was the dishwasher. There is a catchy bit on the side of one of the trays and everything gets caught there.  That meant this was a sweater that was 8 years old and in need of significant repair.  

This is a problem I am facing with my entire wardrobe.  Most of my things are old, but for a few tee shirts and the things I sewed last summer.  Quite a number of things are 5 years old and I know that because I had to stop and buy clothes when Brian was sick.  At the time my wardrobe could no longer support being out in public every day and it has not really gotten any better in the years since.  I hate shopping for clothes.  More, I hate paying for things that are poor quality and an even poorer fit.  I have spoken of this before.  

Much of my wardrobe issues come from personality quirks.  If I do not have a personal connection to a thing, it is easy to let go.  I've never had a problem letting go of books I wasn't fond of, or decorative items or furniture.  Even selling the house I lived in for 24 years was not a problem.  If I like something or more importantly have a strong ongoing emotional connection to it,  I want to hold on to it forever.   

I've been trying to weed out these silly behaviours when I see them and I am trying to see them sooner than I used to.  So, when I tell you that this sweater has been a hard thing to let go of, you will understand.  But what to do with a sweater that cannot be a sweater anymore?  I was struggling with the losing all that work and that lovely pattern on top.  No. Just no.

When I decided to fix the problem on my striped sweater collar, that seemed to open the floodgates.  I was digging in my sewing things last week and I realized that there were two packages of bag stiffener on the shelves.  The sweater popped into my mind and I knew what I was going to do.  

On the weekend, I tossed the sweater in with towels and started to felt it.  In all I had to put it through the machine, washer and dryer, three times to get the right fabric and size, but here I am.    

My goal for the day yesterday was to do a bit of sewing to turn this

and these

into a good basic useable bag. 

I hemmed and hawed at the fabric store about the kind of bag handles I wanted to attach.  Fabricland,  the local chain fabric store, is carrying a large range of bag things right now.  The handles they had came in many styles and colours, but the price.  Oh my goodness the price!  Forty dollars plus.  I wasn't having any of that, so I opted for  much simpler kind of strap. 

I wouldn't have needed the d-rings, but once I knew I was going with a cross body style bag, determined by the handle choice,  it felt like the right look.  I debated a zipper closure for the top, but opted for a simple toggle closure.  It gives me more flexibility in carrying a large variety of stuff.  Baugette and cheese with wine for a picnic?  No problem.

The outside is complete but there is still lots to do to get this bag ready to use.  I could use it as is, but I want this bag to be a sturdy carry all, something that will last and I would like it to sit better, so a wider bottom is in order.  I am going to line it properly and will be using some of that interfacing that is sitting on my shelf.  

So, lots to do today.  There is some other sewing to complete before the sewing desk is clear to work on linings, and there is a knitted scarf for my peanut, Carter to finish.  Plus there are a couple things to cut out for sewing next week. It will be a good, busy day.  Time to start.