Castaway

Sleeve Island, what a lonely place to be.

So little left to do on this Cotton Sweater of Many Ends


And yet, picking it up to knit some more rounds of a sleeve feels a bit like running away from the Thing behind the door in a dream. My hands move slowly, and surely a sweater this size shouldn't weigh 25 pounds! The weight of resistance burdens every stitch.

And yet, I do want it done, and the deadline for county fair entries looms. What to do?

Well, I did finish some spinning.



And how I miss the good camera, which is hurt and out of commission right now. Turned out I got about 500 yards of singles from the Grafton Fibers batt. Once they were skeined up, I washed and shocked them with agitation and repeated plungings from hot to cold water so that they'd be slightly-fulled. I don't trust my singles spinning that much yet.

Even with the rotten pictures, perhaps you can tell why I can't wait to get this knit up into something. This yarn wants, I believe, to be a warm, squishy hat. Exactly which warm, squishy hat is still in debate.


I must not be the only spinner who waffles about finding the Right Pattern to complement finished yarn. Commercial yarn doesn't carry the weight that handspun does for me. I've loved every one of my few handspun knitting adventures, so I probably should get going.


Once I finish 4.6 sleeves, that is.

Not quite up to cuff

My first year at college, my sister and I wrote letters to each other. A lot. We had to keep each other up on stuff, and it was just nice to get letters. Then I moved back home for a while, and we didn't have to write to each other. Through various moves, we wrote, or called, and during one particularly fruitful period, we wrote and called. I have boxes of letters from her just sitting around. Now that we get to see each other in person, we don't write much more than the occasional card. I'd rather have the face to face memories, really. However, I still am fortunate to have a couple of friends to whom (and one from whom) letters go pretty regularly.

My kids may not have this, so much.


Hours on the phone, hours IMing, but scented bundles tied up with ribbons? Let's hope they do, at least some. Besides, we love our postal carrier. I'm sure he would appreciate some good handwritten mail to deliver.

He would not, however, appreciate this mitten, cast on to have something simpler to knit out and about, so much.


The cuff is a little short on Eric, who doesn't have unusually long hands. So far, it's a woman's mitten. I like the way the darker handspun looks as though it has black stripes in it, and how the thumb cap-stripe matches up with the body. Completely unplanned.

On the checkerboardy side, the singles effect really shows up -- the stitches have a straight line marching up the mitten.


I've cast on, at least, for the second mitten and its green stripe on the cuff is moving along. I'm tempted to knit it longer, but I think these are going to have to be a shorter pair, in the interest of getting back to finishing the snail mitten

Just a pet, not a kid

Many thoughts competed for this blog post, and the title one isn't one I planned to go into. I love my pets, love them bunches. But ever since having kids, I've done the, in my opinion, normal shift. Kids first, then pets. Even though they sometimes look like little people, they're not. I also have no kid pictures today. Just the way it went. So I can't prove that they're different, photographically.

For one thing, they're generally less trouble, but my children rarely chew furniture. On the other hand, I just heard a son return yelling before he got through the door. Sigh. I think he's hungry.

He's hungry because instead of putting the (already cooked) dinner on the table, I took ten minutes at the wheel. Then it stretched to twenty because I took the time to make a teensy fairy swatch:


Looks like one of the cats, sort of:


Now I'm all excited about spinning it up, then skeining and I bet fulling the snot out of it so it won't drift. It's so pretty I want maximum yardage, so no plying.

Off to feed the beasties.

Add one, subtract one and get one done

What could my kids be looking for


yesterday, in the cold, on the beach?


Elephant seals!


Everyone knows a family who lives somewhere great but doesn't take advantage of their opportunities, right? Generally, we're that family. Fortunately, I have much more organized friends, and every year, they trundle down the coast to one of the very very few places that elephant seals come ashore to pup.

Imagine only spending a few months a year on land, and the rest hunting and swimming in very cold water. Walking near them was cold enough, thank you very much. They are awesomely big up close. They said it was safe, but I couldn't get a good picture of my next-oldest child; she was staying very close to the rest because she was wary of these huge pinnipeds.

Speaking of enormous mammals, Mikey got to play with his neighbor, Star, today.


She's so much faster than he is that it's mostly a chase, and eventually he gives up and just watches, making halfhearted feints as she careers around him. He enjoys it mightily. He does most things mightily, come to think of it.

I'm mightily glad to be nearly done (save the thumb) of mitten the first, aka the second.


The real first is now poised to become the second. Hooray for looser tension. It fits less like a glove and more like a comfy mitt. Still, it is a little daunting to be right back where I started, more or less. Oh well, if one has to stay in place, having one warm hand is something.

When I just couldn't face the thought of starting more colorwork tonight, as it got later and later at my friend's knit night, I decided that I could definitely face winding a plying ball. Turns out that laceweight baby camel and silk makes for a slow-winding ball, but a pretty one:


Alas and alack, the "wobble" on my Bosworth mini spindle turned out to be due to a rather substantial crack in the whorl, just at the base of the central "throat":


I guess we're going to try to clamp and glue it. I love this spindle. In fact, I have a huge bunch of baby camel and silk roving rooting for it to pull through.

Tomorrow is certainly enough time to worry about it.

So much fun I had to do it again

As our littlest one would say, "Of course I want to play Sorry again. It's so much fun!" (So we do, as often as we can.)

Which is how I felt tonight about spinning. My wheel stays idle for months and then I remember that I love this.


As I noted, I love it more without the brightest yellow bits. Sometimes I wonder if I have very strange reactions to colors, because I'm pretty much all about single-color yarns, although I love colorwork. Oh well, unless I'm going to start dyeing or get a drum carder, I'm not going to worry about it.

Worrying about aging has become something of a hobby for me, though. Currently, I'm annoyed that I have something I consider a serious Old Lady problem. One of my heels has cracked in the dry weather:

Nothing like slathering coconut oil on a foot before bed to make me feel the miles. . .

Progress without pictures

A few rounds more on the mitten today. My sister asked how many hours I thought it took per mitten, and I once again wished that I had a portable chess clock for my knitting. Apparently I could use a downloadable app to do so!

At any rate, I estimated 13-15 hours a mitten (I'm a painfully slow knitter, alas). The sobering realization is that I knit maybe 30 minutes a day, even though I'd like to do more. Seems that between chauffering, and cleaning, and cooking and feeding and homeschooling and working, there isn't a lot of time to knit.

Tonight there was no knitting because it was Spinning Night at the library. I wish I'd brought my camera (and if my friend sends her pictures I'll edit them in) because my Grafton Fibers batt looked so lush laid out I almost wanted to just leave it as is or felt it for a lap robe.

Instead I spun it, and then decided I liked it best without the neon yellow and orange. It's going to be a tweedy brown. Maybe I'll make enough as a long-draw single to make a teeny girl sweater. If not, the standard hat, I suppose.

The dog appears to be standing guard. It's an illusion. He'll follow me upstairs as soon as I go. Definitely a mama's boy.

260 yards

This came out to somewhere in that neighborhood.

I figured that I needed to spin through my fiber stash as well as knit through my yarn stash, and in order to do that I'd have to loosen up a little. Instead of working for perfection, I'd concentrate on speedy and soft.

This old batt, held back for when I was "good enough," seemed like a fine bunch to let go of some self-imposed perfectionism with. I think it's bamboo/silk/alpaca. The black hairs showed up much more in the spin than they did in the batt.

Over the fold, medium whorl on my Lendrum, and a few spinning nights at the library. I tried to spin loosely and ply tight.


Not perfection, no, but done, and already planned for a sweater yoke -- swatched and everything. On size 10 needles, it knits up at about 5 stitches to the inch. And it's very soft. I don't want to spin everything like this, but it was a good exercise.

If you want attention in Italy

Try pulling out a drop spindle on a train. Eric and I got to spend a week in Genoa for a conference he attended, and I managed to find things to interest and amuse me.

A Ravelry friend helped me buy yarn -- the whole "yarn museum" approach in Italy (and, I'm told, much of Europe) can feel intimidating. Thank goodness for generous people who are willing to help you talk to the shopkeepers. This store was much more yarn-filled than the one I had found on my own, and I don't think I would have discovered it without help.


Everywhere I went, I worked away on the knitting I brought with me, even though, in retrospect, three projects might have been a bit of overkill. I have enough problems knitting lace without jet lag complicating things.

On a short day trip, though, I was tired enough that even my ongoing project seemed too much for the train ride home. So I pulled out this yummy baby camel and silk I've been working on, and proceeded to go into a sort of spinning zone.


Eric said some guy did a triple take as he disembarked from the train, but it was when we were en route in our compartment that the fun began. Two delightful ladies sitting across from us chattered away in surprise. "Mi nonna" was all I caught, but the foot gestures were unmistakable. I managed, with the help of the woman next to me, to tell them that I, too, had a wheel (come un bicicleta! I tried), but that when I traveled, this was the way to go.
Then we managed to get onto how to say "crochet" in English, as it's spelled the same but sounds like the game with balls and wickets. When I pulled out my knitting, the woman asked for it and showed me, I believe, the "right" way to knit, English-style, but very fast. I told her I was faster doing it my way, but went on to show her that I could do it her way and did when I knit with two colors.

It was simply charming, but I don't think I would spin when in Italy again unless I'd done some serious work on my language skills. It's just too much of a conversation piece.

I had gotten about 600 yards of a nice steel-gray two ply lace yarn to bring home to my sister, and for me, just enough for a pair of very bright colorwork mittens. I can't wait to get to them. Eventually.


It's good to be home, and it's good to realize that even in another country, faced with what seemed like overwhelming temptation, I found I didn't need that much yarn. Maybe having a spindle and three projects wasn't overkill, in the end.

Oh Say can you see, see, see the OCD?

I'm such a seat-of-the pants kind of woman. Days go by, and I just carom from stimulus to crisis, reacting as best I can, but not much is planned. Yet, there's a small part of me (probably huddling in the attic of my mind, moaning) that likes order, and clean Scandinavian spaces, and light, and quiet. Caterina right now is listening to Bowling for Soup, there goes the quiet. . .

Anyhow, the other day, Beloved Sister came over to rearrange the yarn room with me. Afterwards, she gently suggested that I might have a wee problem. This, of course, is the same sister who reminded me about the bag sale at Stash, so, "enabler" comes immediately to mind. However, due to some unexpected good fortune, I have a couple of travel-related delights to save money for, and certainly enough yarn and fiber to enjoy the using of it without needing to spend any money to acquire more.*

So, I gave myself a challenge. Twelve completed items from the stash before any more yarn or fiber comes home. They don't have to be huge -- I have some yarn set aside for an afghan, and that's not getting done any time soon -- but swatches certainly don't count. Spinning does, however, so I pulled out this lovely eight ounces of. . . something unlabeled. I remember that it had bamboo and silk in it, but there appears to be some dark long hairs in it. Alpaca? Maybe. Maybe it's wool.

And I think I'd been saving it for "when I was good enough" to spin it. My last experience with bamboo was unhappy. Then I figured, there is more where that came from, essentially, and the spinning is a joy, especially with the Woolee Winder Eric got me for Christmas. Woo-hoo! Just focusing on that long draw from the fold while the yarn is wound on in that smooth, even way. Makes my knees go weak, practically. This is where my inner order-lover comes out in the spinning. It's a clean, neat, sunlit room on a bobbin. So it doesn't matter if it's perfect, it's flat, and it's very very pretty.

I can't wait to spin up the whole whack and decide whether or not to knit it as singles or ply it.

And not just because I could get more eventually.


*At least, not until the Delightful Travel experiences.

Change of the guard

Last year, I grew Japanese Indigo in my garden, and did some dyeing experiments with it on Sheep Shed Studio mill ends.

The first filled bobbins are now all plyed -- 295 yards of about sport weight three ply:


The lighter side is probably truest to color; it's cloudy today.

Because I am not the kind of person for whom details work out, one bobbin finished before the other two. And they looked so even! Anyhow, once I wind those two off to make another one again, I'll finish plying and end up with a bit over 300 yards. I spun this as worsted as I can, and it's crisp -- no bounce, lots of shine. It should make something nice and intricate. Now, if I can only think of an appropriate pattern. Maybe Koolhaas? But who needs another hat?

The really exciting part about finishing this yarn is getting to switch from my Lendrum's stock slider option to the Woolee Winder that Eric gifted me for Christmas. I can't wait to just spin without stopping. And it fulfills my weird flat filled bobbin mania. There's some orange fiber with my name on it upstairs. . .

Finished things

I realized that I didn't explain the helmet hair in the last post. We've been riding our bikes and we all have wonky hair after pulling off our super-duper bike helmets. Oh well, small price to pay, I guess. Plus, my hair is often damp so I just do some heavy-duty finger fluffing once I get home.

The latest hat will probably mash hair much more thoroughly than a bike helmet, though. My own 3/2 rib design, quickly put up in Lamb's Pride worsted, in the same color I knit my very first sweater for me in, about 12 years ago. I have got to get this yarn all used up! Maybe I'll knit feltable potholders or something.


I liked the decreases when I was done:


The yarn dyed with indigo has been humming in my head ever since it was dry: "Wonder what I'll loooooooook like? Wonder how I'll spinnnnnnn. . . " I may not be able to resist heedlessly starting new knitting projects as the whim takes me, but I can wait on spinning, partially because I only have a few bobbins and it's hard to spin over other yarn. Besides, I had to finish that lavender wool that I had 3/4 spun up. So I did.


618 yards of two-ply laceweight. I haven't figured out the wpi yet, and it clearly varies. I'm toying with the idea of replying it. It's nicely balanced, but it's very loosely plied. I obviously need some remedial spinning help.


The color is sort of all over the place. Some of the white appears yellowish to me, but the lavender is kind of appealing. A swatch would tell a truer story.


Maybe when I finish the two sweaters just hanging about on the needles, that's just what I'll do. Or else I'll spin indigo. . .

Little bit at a time

About some things I'm pretty patient, willing to wait a really long time; others, not so much. Weird, swinging from "Now, now, now!" to "All in good time. . . breathing, breathing." Hee.

Thing 2 is learning that a hat doesn't grow without patient additions of stitch after stitch -- that just doing it is the key. She keeps showing me the stripes and how they're growing. Now the magic loop isn't as necessary, because it's grown enough to stretch -- both around the needle and around her head.


My commitment to daily spinning (and the consequent patient attendance for each Things' piano practice) leaves me only six or so inches of roving left. . . on the first half. Almost a full bobbin of laceweight singles.


I figure by November I'll be plying something that's going to add up to light fingering weight yarn. I'm looking forward to putting something different on the wheel. Alpaca, maybe? Or bamboo/wool mixed. So many beauties to choose from.

It appears that the Ravelry magic has come through. By importuning everyone who had that orange tweed in their stash (some of whom hadn't intended to sell), I've gotten enough to get the sweater done. Once it shows up, of course.

Patience, patience.

Searing and Spinning

One of my favorite recipes is a version of Szechuan green beans. Fresh, plump green beans straight from the farmer's market, tossed into a hot cast iron pan slicked with sesame oil. After about half the beans show some sear marks, add a good bunch of chopped garlic. Salt to taste and finish searing. I like the fact that "burnt" means "pretty darn good" in this version -- I can be my usual distracted self and still have a dish fit to yum down.

Good hot, cold, and in-between. Once I took a bag of these to a movie for my snack and the folks around me seemed to think I was teasing them with the good garlicky smell. Or else they were annoyed that it was competing with their popcorn. I didn't ask, but I haven't done that again.

Oh, I feel as though I need to explain. The chicken I slaughtered wasn't done for any random reason. One of the new "hens" we got for laying purposes developed quite a set of wattles and an impressive crow, which he exercised all day long, from 5:30 or so in the morning until the sun went down.

No matter what my back yard looks like, I live in a pretty regulated city, so a rooster is Not Okay. I did try to find him another home, in a nearby, less-uptight city. Also I had folks who called sanctuaries and other things to see if they could place him. Alas, no one could or did in the time allotted, and I was seriously concerned that if we had a complaint called in, I might have to do some fancy explaining about the beehives and the other fowl. So his fate was sealed. I didn't enjoy it, as I said, but I did think it was part of being responsible.

Whew.

In more-pleasant topics, this is what is on my wheel now, in "Lavender Frost" from Girlontherocks. I had thought "socks" when I saw this, but as I'm spinning it seems to want to be a laceweight two-ply. Can something lacey be in my future?



Heh. Probably not if I'm responsible for knitting it. I just got another class for next term. The bank account's going to be happy, but I bet I don't get quite as much time with the needles as I might otherwise. And you know, with all of the other things in my head, I'm probably not going to be all that composed and knitterly for a while. I'll stick to nice, stockinetty-type projects.

After I finish my sister's Cobblestone and the other snail mitten, of course.

Low-Rent

It's not quite as bad as a television reality show, but I'm still in my robe, still on my bed (I did muster the gumption to make it), and the kids are foraging for their own breakfast.

They were rotten at bedtime last night, and this morning I read both papers in bed, and got the opportunity to read editorials out loud to the mister. I love that. Then I decided to start working without moving and only got up to make tea. It could be worse. I could be blogging, or reading updates of soap operas, I guess.

I'm not going to ignore them all day. Just get my work done, jump rope, shower, and then I'll finish cleaning the house, inside and out, for our guests tonight. I'm so excited about seeing these folks. One of the guys is a spinner, so I hope to get some tips on spinning thicker singles. Seems as I get thin down, I lose the capacity for thick. Sigh.

No photos today, for obvious reasons.

Such a cozy room

The older I get, the more layers the world seems to have, or maybe I'm just more attuned to the "To see a world in a grain of sand" opportunities that exist. Graduate school, though a misinformed choice in many ways, made my generally cheery heart even more so. There are people to whom the minutiae of Victorian architecture or the poetry of Yeats or the history of agricultural sharecroppers in the post-Civil war U.S. South are utterly engaging. Utterly.

While I don't share those particular obsessions, I'm so glad that the universe has depths such as that for folks to tread. Can you imagine how awful it would be if there weren't the kind of lovely interlacements so that one bit of discovery leads to another and another and whoops hey, we're discussing High German versus low, closed-system back yard gardening and the fluidity of identity.

A long way 'round to saying that I am delighted to have avocations I can use to strive for excellence. There is always more to learn, better physical execution of each movement. Or maybe, I just learn slowly and have lots of room for improvement.

235 yards of two-ply Blue Faced Leicester from GirlontheRocks in the Sirius colorway. I'm not happy about how muddy the colors turned out. I think I'm going to have to concentrate on tweeds and tone-on-tone blends in the future. And on consistency, apparently.

Quite a Day

Another cruddy run this morning -- who knows what's what? And then I didn't quite get around to taking a shower. . . instead, I cajoled the younger Things into picking more blackberries with me. Well, I packed some toys for them (next time, I'm bringing heavy-duty snacks) and I picked while they jumped around. I could always shower later, I figured.

A harvest-hovercraft has been a fantasy of mine for a long, long time. Something you lie facedown upon, with a forehead support and arms free, to garden, weed, or in this case, pick berries, while it moves up or down, probably controlled by toe movements -- that's what I needed today. These berry bushes are high, and even with a stepstool, reaching up through very old, very brambly berries cost me in lacerations.

Speaking of lacerations? After I made a batch of way too runny jam/waffle topping (mmmmmm, blackberries and powdered sugar, anyone? Allison?), the bigger girls came home from sailing and I was just about to make lunch when the dining room erupted with screams. On my way to the bathroom following the screamer, I noticed that there was a swath of what appeared to be jam all over the floor -- in a droplet/spray pattern.

Hmm, is that jam on the floor? Nope, it was, in fact, blood, the blood of my only son. Seems he was using a butter knife in an unapproved way and laid open his index finger about 1/3 of the way around, right above a bendy spot.


Channeling my sister, I said, "Get in the car," and off we went to our friendly local hospital and its blessedly inactive emergency room. I had called our pediatrician's office to see if they'd like to suture it, but they were closed for lunch.

While it took longer than we'd hoped, and there were tears, he was a great patient through three different nerve block needles, followed by much cleaning and then three stitches. Now I have to keep him clean and dry (ha ha ha ha) for at least five days, and the stitches in for ten.

Many people in the emergency department commented on the, erm, lack of cleanliness he exhibited. Since I know some boys go through an anti-hygiene stage, I'm not usually bothered by it. When I realized that he also had mismatching socks on and had dried blackberry jam in his hair, I felt a little worse. At least I'd changed from running/berrying clothes into a Suburban Mom Secret Agent costume, so no one called any government agencies on me.

Eric came home as soon as he could, and he and I did the "hi, honey, I'm so glad you could come, bye, I'll take this one, you take those" talk. It was a real treat to have him home during the day, even if it was because of something rough. Besides, he's sunburned from yesterday and needed a rest.

So, I didn't cook tonight but treated us to wraps and soup from the local joint, and spent my "oughta be grading" time plying. Now I have this somewhat muddy-colored two ply to measure tomorrow. It's not really floating in outer space, that's just the effect of a dimly-lit room on flash photography:



And I still haven't showered and must grade some papers tonight. I am truly and fully blessed.

Transformations

Not very exciting yarn, too fuzzy and too uneven. I didn't even like the dye job, although I found the crabapple blossoms that inspired it took me out of myself in a way that didn't happen a lot last year. Trying to spin a thicker yarn was tough. Generally that means that more practice is in order!

When I gave that measly 45 yards of yarn to a knitting friend, she squealed, "I'll make you something out of it!" I laughed. She's very busy -- she teaches classes, she homeschools, she's involved with her extended family and she's beloved by the little folks in our group.

Imagine my surprise on Thursday when she reached into her bag and handed me this:


The button just makes the little clutch. I think I'm going to tuck it into my notions box and see what it wants to hold, or to whom it wants to go.

And here at home, this roving


Became these singles.


1.4 ounces of BFL in the Sirius colorway from Girl on the Rocks. I'm hoping to get the other thirds spun up before my fingers forget the feel of the first single. Consistency isn't easy for me, but I'd like to make yarn I like enough to knit into socks. And I do love the BFL!

Maybe I'll use spinning as a treat to reward myself if/when I finally get my classes all caught up. Only three more weeks for this session -- I have knitting and spinning to attend to, and paid work is getting firmly in the way. Sheesh.

So there are the kind of parents who never embarrass their kids. The kind who have matching shoes and socks, who don't ask their friends awkward questions (like, "Hi, how are you?"), the kind who don't ever burst into song in the aisles at Trader Joe's and do a little shuffle shuffle, hip thrust right by the nuts and dried fruit, and the kind who do not stop by tree trimmer's trucks every single time they see them and ask for a truckload of mulch to be dumped in their yards.

These parents probably only exist in fiction. I remember being horribly embarrassed by my father, but then so was my mother, so it probably wasn't just teen-hood. I don't think I cross the line, even with tree trimmers, because I never tell them they have to go to college and make something of themselves, nor do I hold up my children as examples, negative or positive, to the tree trimmers.

After months, literally months of talking to random tree guys on the street, today as I biked the little ones to swim lessons (almost done! Thing 4 puts her head under water now!) I stopped yet again. I am nothing if not persistent in my optimism -- someone's going to bring me free mulch someday -- and I chatted them up a bit and asked if they'd dump a whole load into my driveway. As I pedaled away, I called out my address one more time.

And then I forgot about it. I've made a new friend family at swim lessons, so I chatted with the husband (the wife was taking her lactation consultant board exam -- so cool) and got a lovely surprise when I came home. Here's the view from my front room:


The only down side I can begin to think of is the effort it's going to take to finish weeding and raking the back yard before moving it, wheelbarrow load by load. But hey, what else would I do with my time?

One thing I'm not going to do is spin more bamboo. Why? Because, after spending months worrying about ruining some beautiful roving, making half-hearted attempt after another, last night I just sat down with the rest of it and spun. I didn't worry about doing it perfectly, but I didn't give up either. Just spun and spun. And when I was done? I plied it up with the rest of the dark brown merino to get this:



Only 88 yards were in the other skein -- it seemed like longer when I was spinning, but interestingly enough, last night's was spun in a different spirit and it went faster and easier. Lessons there, of course. Lessons everywhere, darn it all. Whether or not I have enough for a scarf or not.

Aaaaaaahhhhhhh