Month: March 2007

• Ouch. Today my wrists are stiff and achy in sympathy with my niece’s. I did far too much knitting of cotton washcloths over the weekend, and, as I’m a tight knitter to start with, everything below my elbows got a bit kinked up. Then, coming home last night in the dark, I tripped over a lawn chair that I’d moved that afternoon. I slammed straight into it with both shins and flopped over it, my keys, purse, and book flying, and landed hard, wrists-first. (Insert spring-forward joke here.) No permanent damage—but it’s been quite a while since my days on the junior high gymnastics team when we used to deliberately practice crazy falls like this so we wouldn’t break anything if we ever took a real tumble.

• Washcloths. I am in love with the one I’m finishing up now—so in love that I’ve kept going and it is turning into a hand towel. I’ll post a photo and pattern once I’ve finished it. I also knit up two circular cloths using patterns from the Dishcloth Boutique that CatBookMom directed me to. For these I used the Sugar ‘n Cream Landscape colorway, a mix of mint, pale chocolate, and white—a refreshing change from my hot pinks and oranges.

• Play Ball! Yesterday, I listened to my first ballgame of the new season on the radio. I was using my hand-cranked, battery-free radio and had to re-crank at every commercial break to keep the thing from dying, but I enjoyed myself immensely. The announcers were giddy as all get-out, joking, repeating themselves, commenting on things they were doing that they wouldn’t do once the official season began. I will have to end my Netflix  and ShowBox subscription. Who has time for movies when baseball’s on the air? I’ll be at the SF Giants’ Stitch-n-Pitch this year. Are any of you planning to go?

• Daylight. I just want to say, “curse you daylight savings time!” I teach 8:00 classes, so get up at 6:00, and every year it’s the same thing. Just as we roll into March and I’m beginning to have the pleasure of waking up in daylight (sometimes before the alarm clock goes off, even), we spring our clocks forward, and I face another month or two of being cruelly jolted awake in utter darkness by that electronic beep-beep-beep-beep-beep. When I am retired and no longer have to put up with this nonsense we call civilization, I am going to keep my clocks on standard time year round.

• Socks. JayhawkKnitter of Knittin’ Honey just turned me on to this great on-line directory of sock patterns categorized by yarn weight. Oh, the possibilities! On the recommendation of Kelly B., who answered my query on the Knitter’s Review Forums, I will be knitting a pair of Fuzzyfeet slippers as a first “sock” pattern. I’ll be using the Lamb’s Pride I got from Discontinued Brand Name Yarn.

• Faultline. Melissa did a hike yesterday up Mission Peak—she wanted to sketch the faultline. If you’re interested in our highly mobile California geography, you can see some of her photos here.

• Splint Covers. The splint cover fits, but can be a pinch shorter on either end, so I’ll get going on version 2.0 now in bright green. I’ll also post that pattern (not that it’s very tricky) in the next few days.

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These are the first two of my Mason-Dixon washcloths.

Aren’t the colors great?

I used their patttern for these two, but have been playing since with different stitches from the various Barbara Walker books.

When I was in fourth grade, my mother made me a sleeveless, dropped-waist dress with a little pleated skirt in a check (a sort of extra-loud gingham, if that makes any sense) in these colors. I loved that dress, and knitting something up in those same happy colors delights me no end.

Meanwhile…

My niece took a spill from her bicycle and broke her wrist. The good news is that it’s not a particularly bad break, but that’s also sort of the bad news. Since the break is minor, she wasn’t given a cast (which would be glam), but instead has to wear a splint for the next six weeks or so (which is anti-glam). My sister called me yesterday to ask if I could modify my wrist-warmer pattern to make a splint cover.

Well, of course I can, and I did. I knit up a version in the Denver colorway of Lion Brand Jiffy. I did the entire piece in 2×2 rib so that it would have extra stretch, and the colors cooperated, by winding up it candy-cane style, with no nasty pooling. The splint cover went in the mail today. Once I get a report on how it fits, I’ll be knitting up a couple more, so that my niece can have some choices. (Lime green will be coming up next.)

Warning: This post is 95% knitting-free, so if you don’t enjoy listening to the babblings of a besotted cat step-mom, feel free to wait for my next post. [Melissa is leaving her comments as well in brackets.]

I’ve been meaning for quite some time to give those of you who like cats a proper introduction to the feline members of our family. We’ll start with the Oakland cats—and promise to do justice to the Santa Cruz cats soon.

Behold Archy—

a somewhat skinny old guy, with a croak of a meow that lets you know right away when the service isn’t up to snuff. Archy has been involved in several passionate relationships with soft green things over the years, including Brigitte, a lime-green fake-fur pillow from Ikea. Like all our cats, Archy was a rescue. Years ago, Melissa kept finding him perched on her motorcycle in the alley behind her home. He was hardly beyond kittenhood then and had little trouble working his way into her heart and in the front door. [Much to the disgust of Lulu, my extra-toed cat from the east coast, who was still with me at the time.]
Because of his early years on the street (at least that’s what we blame it on) Archy has a bit of the wanderlust. Last fall, while Melissa hiked the Camino de Santiago across northern Spain, Archy took advantage of an inattentive (I can think of other words, but I’ll just stick with “inattentive” for propriety’s sake) cat-sitter and went on the lam. The cat-sitter was fired, friends were called in to look after the remaining cats, and I found myself driving from Santa Cruz to Oakland 3-4 times a week to wander Melissa’s industrial wasteland of a neighborhood, shaking a pouch of Temptations and calling “Archy… Arrrchyyyyyyy.” I also made more visits than I ever want to remember to the Oakland and Berkeley animal shelters. I left with a broken heart each time, not just because of Archy, but because of all the marvelous cats so desperate for a home and a chance to share their love. [Sarah-Hope is a saint! as are my friends.]
In an amazing stroke of good luck, a couple in the neighborhood found him late at night three weeks after he’d disappeared and one day before Melissa returned home. He’d lost almost a third of his total weight and had an abscess in his mouth, but he’s made a fully recovery, as these photos attest.

Here we have Archy close up…

…and in profile.

And this is Melissa’s portrait of Archy.

He was younger when she painted this, but he’s definitely grown into the air of crochityness and gravitas that the painting suggests. [It’s rather like Gertrude Stein growing to look like the portrait Picasso painted…]
And, yes, he’s named after the literary cockroach.

We now have the honor of presenting Maggie Gloriana Moo-Woozle, the queen of the household.

Maggie is stalwart in her affections. She spends a good part of each day looking after her “babies” (those stretchy, kind of terry-cloth-like pony-tail holders), moving them up and down stairs, lining them up at the water dish for swimming lessons and such.
Maggie was an unwed mother who’d just been quitted of both kittens and uterus when Melissa adopted her. She has a rather unusual build (short legs, long back) and favors dolman sleeves on her fur coat. [Maggie is very glamorous!]

Of course a cat as glamorous as Maggie is used to the paparazzi…

But she has to set limits sometimes, despite her public’s insatiable desire for her image.

I’ve already mentioned Damian. Now here’s the face to go with the description.

Melissa found Damian and his brother “B” (who sadly did not survive) abandoned in broad day-light, miserable in the heat and sun with eyes still closed and bodies covered in fleas. His rough beginning has not, however, had any lasting impact on his growth. (You will note in the above photo his exquisite man-udder, which spills over his feet with great majesty. He’s frightfully proud of it.)
Because he was bottle-fed, Damian is highly interactive and always willing to pitch in with the project at hand. In fact, his New Year’s resolution was “Be more helpful”—and he’s stuck to it with a vengance.
[When I first found the kittens, the vet was not at all optimistic about their survival, but I brought them home anyway, determined to nurse them back to health. But just in case, I only called them “A” and “B” at first, so I wouldn’t become too attached to them. As if!]

Here Damian is helping with the knitting. (Nothing improves the quality of a fiber more than a bit of judiciously applied cat spit, eh?)

He also likes to help with painting, cooking, mat board cutting, computing, and, of course, eating. His usual strategy is to leap onto the table, then keel over as if he is utterly weak and exhausted… which leads the poor boy to rest his frail head on the rim of any nearby dish… and then, even though he’s about to lose consciousness completely, he manages to find just enough energy to move his lips the least little bit—and you wouldn’t begrudge a dying kitty a last bit of food would you?
Actually, we do, so Damian often spends dinnertime in the bathroom. [The only room in the house with a door!]

When you come to visit, Damian will be glad to nuzzle you with his perpetually wet nose.

If you’ve made it this far, you must be as mad about cats as we are. Huzzah! for nature’s finest species.

Today, I’ve been knitting cotton wash rags, a la Mason-Dixon Knitting. Joann had Sugar ‘n Cream cotton yarn on sale for $1.50 a ball, and I’ve never actually knit these before—so it seemed almost like a sign or something. I find the wash rags inordinately pleasing. I’m using bright colors and every few rows I hold my work up so Melissa can admire it. Her comment: “There must be somethig really specal about those. These days, it usually takes more than a knitted square to get you excited like this.”

Yesterday, Melissa and I joined my mom to go to the musical at the high school I attended. While we were at my mom’s house, we shot pictures of my various yarn buys from Stitches West. So, here are the yarns I found most tantalizing, with my dreams about what they may become someday.

Skye Tweed by Classic Elite Yarns, 100% wool, 110 yards per ball, US 7 or 8 needles.
This yarn has that nice, sort of crunchy feel to it that some wools have, but doesn’t feel scratchy. Last fall I knit up some ocean-inspired hats, using knit stitches for the first pattern set, purls for the next, etc. Now I’d like to try working up the same pattern, using color changes instead of stitch changes to make the pattern more striking. I’m hoping Skye Tweed will be just the ticket.

Mmmmmmmmm…Malabrigo. They’re all 100% wool. In the back we have worsted weight (216 yards per skein, US 7-9 needles): 3 balls of Melilla and 5 balls of Col China. In the front we have a skein of lace-weight in Sealing Wax (410 yards per skein).
I love this yarn and its cotton-ball softness. I have a rectangular shawl pattern picked out for the lace weight. I’m not at all sure yet what I’ll be doing with the worsted weight, but I can tell you whatever I knit will be for me. Me. Me, me, me, me, me.

Silver Thaw by Noro, 50% wool, 25% angora, 25% nylon, 220 meters per skein, US 8-10 needles.
I knit a hat for Melissa in December out of a different colorway of this yarn and enjoyed working with it. The angora takes the edge off the roughness that that’s typical of Noro, making it more comfortable to wear against the skin. This colorway reminds me of fields of lavender or sage with its grey-greens (which didn’t show well in the photo) and purples. Again, I don’t know what I’ll be knitting with this, but the knitting voices in my head told me “Buy it! Buy two!”

On the left: Magallanes by Araucania Yarns, 100% wool, 242 yards per skein, US 6-8 needles. On the right: Caravan by Just Our Yarn, 65% wool, 35% camel down, 300 yards per skein, US 3 needles.
I felt compelled to get the Magallanes because of the color, which seemed simultaneously hideous and alluring: a melange of forest green, burnt orange, peach, and cream. These colors shouldn’t match, they don’t match, but they do—kind of like Peter Cottontail attending Octoberfest. This yarn will no doubt become a hat at some point, but I don’t want to reknit a pattern I’ve already written. I’m waiting for the right new idea to come along.
The moment I saw the Cravan I thought “stranded color-work.” I want to work with these separately, pairing each with a rich deep, brown or a warm gold. The skeins are big enough that if I make hats I can knit each pattern twice, once with the Caravan as the main color, then again with it as the contrast color.

Cashsoft by Rowan, 50% merino, 40% microfibre, 10% cashmere, 142 yards per ball, US 6 six needles.
With these beauties I’m again thinking stranded color-work, but I also expect they’ll show texture nicely, so I may just opt for a nice complicated scarf with cables or bobbles or both. (The upper yarn is actually a yummy butter yellow, not the off-white it appears in the picture.)

If any of you have worked with these yarns before and have advice or project ideas, I would love to hear them. I don’t expect I’ll start knitting with any of them for a few weeks—I want time to think about the possibilities first. Meanwhile, I’ve got cotton wash rags to occupy my fingers.

I’ve yet to knit my first pair of socks, but that hasn’t prevented me from starting to accumulate books about sock knitting and sock patterns and sock yarn. My first sock book was Sensational Knitted Socks, quickly followed by Knitting Vintage Socks. Since yesterday was pay-day, I took advantage of my momentary I-can-make-it-to-the-end-of-the-month hopefulness and ordered two more sock books: Knitting on the Road and Favorite Socks. (The sock yarn stash results from the fact that I like using sock yarn for hats because the small guage lets me fit more repeats of complicated stitches into a reasonably-sized finished product. )

When I started knitting, socks were nowhere on my radar, but that all changed when I got my first look at Sensational Knitted Socks. Not only are the patterns it offers beautiful, but the whole thing is written in a way that brings joy to my “what-if?” heart. What if I want to use a different pattern? What if I want to add colorwork? What if my feet are a funny size? What if I like part of one sock pattern and part of another? Once I get going on socks, this book will be suffering some significant wear.

My sock fascination was further stoked by reading Grumperina’s blog. She knits (and designs) so many pairs, and her beautiful work just makes me ache to go down that sock road myself.

My mom knows how to knit socks and would gladly teach me, but whenever I’m at her house, we always seem to have too many other things to do. One of my LYSs, The Golden Fleece, has a $10 sock clinic on Mondays, so I’m thinking I should just cast on a pair and knit until I’m confused, then head over there.

What brought up these sock thoughts? The March issue of Mag Knits, which features three sock patterns, including my favorite: the Rainy Day Socks by by Yuliya Sullivan. (Aren’t they gorgeous?) I’ll probably start with something simpler, but I want to commit to beginning my first pair of socks before this academic quarter is over. That way, I can go to the sock clinic over spring break.

P.S. If you’re looking for free sock patterns try here and here and here. That should keep you busy.

P.P.S. If any of you who are more versed in the art of the sock than I am have words of warning (or encouragement) to throw my way—go for it! I’d be glad for the help.