i resolve...

to rip out the lovely, really easy knitting i did last night at the wednesday night knit group, a brand new project i found yesterday -- here it is on the designer's blog, and to start this gaia shoulder hug, which i had decided a long time ago i wanted to knit. crazy talk? no -- it's time for resolutions, is it not? ;-)

what intrigues me about the gaia is that the colors emerging from the skein of noro dictate what you do with the pattern. an interesting notion, i think.

other resolutions? one more: to make some when i get inspired to do so. in the meantime, i'm knitting.

textures

and a gauge swatch masquerading as a first attempt at a moebius scarf:
i have a new needle, more appropriate length, more appropriate size for this silk yarn. i'll keep you posted...

i think i know my kitchener stitch

after 4 of these cowls (the 3 newest of which are displayed here), i now know for sure that you start the kitchener stitch with "as if to purl" on the bottom and "as if to knit" on the top, and then start chanting: "knit/slip purl, purl/slip knit"

these have been fun to do, but i'm not sure a production line is in my future...

wednesday night knit cowl

the ER scowl has spawned what my husband calls "yertle" (the turtle), but the gang at abuelita's (my local yarn store) is calling the wednesday night knit cowl. i saw some expensive cowls online before thanksgiving, thought well, i can do that! so cranked out a simple cowl based on the ER scowl.

here's how you do it:

150 yards bulky yarn (i used muench big baby multi)
size 19 (yes, you read that right!) knitting needles

using your favorite provisional cast-on, cast on 27, or an odd number of stitches.
row 1: knit 1, *yarn over, k2tog*. repeat * across.
row 2 and all remaining rows: sl 1 as if to knit, *yo, k2tog* . repeat * across.

when you have about 2 yards of yarn remaining (the cowl will be about 25" long), kitchener stitch the last row to your provisional cast-on. voila! instant cowl!

why is it the wednesday night knit cowl? i wore it to wednesday night sit and knit the night before thanksgiving, and one week later there are 3 or 4 of these chunky lacy cowls wandering around ;-).

ER... scowl

well, i have had a scary week. it peaked at 9:30pm tuesday when a neurologist told me to take my 7 year old to the ER immediately for a CT scan to rule out a brain tumor. i will not lie -- i brought knitting. i grabbed my knitting bag containing the clapotis (i want to FINISH it) -- my knitting bag also had some random needles and yarn. my 79.2 lb. 7 year old sat on my lap from 10 pm until about 2 am, when he fell asleep on the bed in our cold ER room as we were waiting for the machine. i looked at the clapotis and thought "i cannot even pretend to care about a pattern right now" and so i rummaged through the bag and found some yarn i bought at michael's when i was back east last month -- a lovely soft bamboo blend from caron in sage -- and some 10.5 needles. "i will make a scarf," thought i. 4 cast-on's later (it was REALLY hard to concentrate), i settled on 21 stitches and the lace equivalent of garter stitch. sl 1, *yo, k2tog* to end of row, turn, repeat. it grew quickly.
CT: NORMAL RESULTS, hallelujah, home by 5:30 am.
in the neurologist's waiting room 6 hours later, i added 2 more rows and started the 3 needle bind-off after i decided that a cowl would be a good thing for me. it is quite lovely and warm (i wore it yesterday) and it doubles as a headband.
my little boy is fine, we're addressing the situation which is not as dire as the experts feared, and we're off to baja, baby. i need a vacation.

the grown-up version

wooly wormhead has a pattern for a grown-up tri-peak hat in addition to the pattern for the baby one i knit a few weeks ago. my husband liked the style of the tri-peak hat, so i thought i'd knit him one (this is my little boy modeling it). i had some silk garden in stash, so cast-on and started knitting.
i love the two row/two colorway noro striping made popular by jared flood and his hat and scarf, so i let the noro gods do the color planning for this hat, too.
even with size 7 needles, the hat ended up being pretty big, so i ended up ripping it out and reknitting with 90 stitches. i also ribbed the edge instead of letting it roll, because he'll probably wear the hat to sleep when we're camping, and the roll might be annoying. if i were to do it again, i'd make it an inch shorter. the 10 inch length includes the roll.

can you read this?

it says Hiney Hider, and it's the bathroom door lock at the salt lake city airport (i think -- i was in quite a few airports that weekend)
sorry it's blurry.
it was so funny it had to be documented...

harry potter and the self-made gypsy

thing one and thing two, dressed and ready to charm. i was so happy that:
1. the gypsy both wanted to and did create/cut/sew/tie her entire own costume, saving money for the fabulous crystal ball ("there is great wealth in your future!")
2. harry wanted to be harry and not the ubiquitous star wars clone. i did not want to have to argue YET AGAIN about the fact that a light saber IS a weapon, at least in the eyes of one's principal.

kieran tweed (last name)'s hat

our friend tweed (best name ever!) (hippie parents, i think) and his lovely wife have just had their first baby. this called for a quick knit/stash buster/not boring kind of baby hat. i found one here -- how cute is that?! my version looks a bit long on the upside-down soda bottle model -- it'll fill out over a little baby dome, i think. plus the roll can be adjusted.

using size 2 dp needles, i cast on 102 st of the online superwash sock yarn (not exactly the colorway, which i think is discontinued), knit for 6.5", and used the super snappy crochet bind-off.
i have to say that the yummy blondwood size 2 dpn's i have were TERRIBLE with this yarn -- way too sticky a combination. but i did not have the right size addi circular, so i toughed it out.

i started it friday night, finished sunday afternoon, and actually spoke to people in between ;-).

knitting is my bag

my latest bag started off as a simple large tote, but then i wanted it to go from dark brown to dark green, blended by a skein of complementary kureyon, and when i got done with that, it looked so yummy and tweedy that i had to fight the urge to do the top as argyle and complete the whole old-fashioned knit feel. so i decided to entrelac the top, just to generate those diagonals as texture, with limited color change (blending green and brown for a tweedy feel again, on the squares). we'll see how it goes -- the entrelac is a slow process, for me.
here's the kureyon tweediness -- it'll be even more tweedy once it's felted. (btw, the colors are not especially representative of reality; c'est la vie, or at least la photographie)

it's hard to take a picture of entrelac in progress!!!

i'm not sure how it will felt up, with three different yarns, straight stockinette, and entrelac started from stockinette on the top. if the entrelac flares a bit, that will be ok, but if it shrinks up smaller than the stockinette, i'll be disappointed. it's going to have to be a careful felt.

if i start knitting a blanket,

will i finish it?

look at these gee's bend quilt sections:



would it not be so fun to interpret one of those in knitting? how would it look felted?

this is not a new idea, being inspired by quilts, but i am enjoying thinking about doing things like using short rows to emulate the uneven blocks of fabric, using noro to generate uneven sorts of stripes... wow. fun to ponder...

halloween dry run

can you guess what we will be on halloween?

knitting will return soon...

is it a table runner?

or a scarf?


how 'bout that green and white striped top? we clearly did not dress up for our modeling session ;-).

here's a dishcloth made by combining two tunisian crochet stitches in different ways:
oh -- and the middle square is a tunisian cross stitch, done using the simple stitch and crossing 2 bars on the forward row. i think if you click on the picture it will get really big and you'll see some detail.

tunisian crochet has been lots of fun to explore, especially with the noro and the 3 color experiment. it's a heavy scarf (almost 6 full skeins) and will be yummy and warm!

avoidance

i restarted the 3 color tunisian in hope that a sample hanging at abuelita's will attract a class. it's now close to 6 feet long and i'm on my second set of noro skeins. my wrist got a little overused so i used that opportunity to return to knitting and finish up a few things.

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when i was in colorado, i got all but 14 handle rows done (under 100 stitches) and 2 kitcheners done on this knitty french market bag. this time, i followed the measurements given in the pattern, but still doubled the worsted weight yarn and used size 13 needles like i did on my last one. as a result, this one is smaller but just as useful! the fair isle pattern i grabbed (and modified slightly) from the 2 at a time socks book.
after felting:have you seen ysolda's wee owl? thing 1 has a harry potter theme birthday party to go to, so i thought this would be cute as a little package decoration.
finally, my latest lace sampler bag. i started off again with the blueberry stitch from nancy bush's knitted lace of estonia, then did several rounds of y/o k2tog, then several rounds of the filet stitch i did on my green blueberry filet. then 1 round of k1, y/o, one round of knit, dropping the y/o's, then back to the looser round. i found a lace pattern i wanted to try, and here's the result -- a sturdy, good-looking grocery bag!

pretty productive avoidance, wouldn't you say?! ;-)

mrs. lear's leaf

i faithfully follow the runcible bin (you can see it on my list to the right), and have been watching her delightful short-row experiment with kitchen cotton and a leaf-shaped dishcloth. yesterday she offered a pattern, i jumped on it, and here's the result!

isn't it fun? i have not done much with short rows so it took me a bit to understand the shorthand; i also had kids running around while i was doing it so it may not look exactly right. but i used up some stash i didn't like for the veining -- that came out even better than i had hoped, and modified the stem the tiniest bit so that the light green would come out on the edge. i have no idea why that was important to me ;-) but it was! and luckily i guessed right on the early bind-off. if you double-click on the pictures, you will see them larger and in more detail.

back to the tunisian crochet -- yes, i started another one in hopes of attracting a class to teach at abuelita's. it looks gorgeous, but my wrist hurts -- the motion is a lot more repetitive than knitting for me. time to suck it up and git 'er done!

time for some chemistry

anyone else do this? i mix the baking soda and borax in equal parts. i use a tablespoon of the concoction in the dishwasher with half of the normal liquid cascade (or whatever) and a scoop in the washer instead of oxiclean.

i feel quite thrifty!

necessity is the mother of invention, or ...

...i am the macgyver of knitting.

i wanted to try this tunisian crochet 3 color technique i saw. isn't that amazing? doesn't that say noro to you? it did to me!

i made a little afghan YEARS (read 20?) ago using the afghan stitch/tunisian crochet so have a hook somewhere. well, finding it was going to involve turning more stuff upside down than i wanted to do, so here's what i did:
voila! duct tape and a cork -- instant afghan hook! i knew all that wine would do me some good ;-)

i live in a white house

but look how red/orange the light is this morning with all the smoke...

looking east at 7:30 this morning.

bye bye zg

tibetan monks painstakingly and patiently creating a mandala at the aspen chapel:

here we are trying to take it in without sneezing or startling anyone:

annual team photo at maroon bells, featuring me trying to learn about my new camera's self-timer:

color(ado) days

captured on red to yellow and everything in between day:

columbine

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honeysuckle
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the humble pansy