finally finished!

for a friend.

now  to the test knitters!

what’s going on?

it has been busy over here!  my husband, who is an adjunct professor at 2 colleges/universities, is done for his semester.  which gives me a bit of time to work… meaning business work, but also housework and other odds and ends. sadly, not quite as much woolie work as i would want.

this sweater just needs the underarms grafted.  but it doesn’t need to be done right now, so probably won’t be.

three baby patterns just need the math written up so i can get them to test knitters.

i’ve been busting out a shawl for a friend who is moving away very soon.  there will also be a pattern for this one.

and i need to spin some hair for a doll my mama is making the babe.  who, by the way, is passing the baby stage entirely too fast!

plus, my biggest wish, is to get the studio in a decent state so i can start having open studios in the fall!  but i’ve got all summer to do that minus big trips to MT, AK, and a cross country drive.  we’ll see.  this week we’ve been enjoying ben’s break with long walks, trips to the park, home cooked meals, and plenty of daddy/baby jogging/walking expeditions.  not to mention, naps for all.  and today i got to sleep in until 9.

and i’ve been particularly enjoying this.

hope you’re having a nice spring!

ann’s scarf

one holidayish gift down.  this scarf is for ben’s professor who saw him through his masters and his playing certificate.  and got him the his job as adjunct professor.  she has been fabulous and deserves nothing less than kidsilk haze. also, she loves the color red.

this was my first time knitting with kidsilk haze and it was lovely.  i did have to dig out some pointier needles than i started with and thank goodness i did.  i might not have survived otherwise ;)  i do believe i’ll knit this scarf again in my snapdragon light fingering.  it will be a sample and maybe a free pattern with a yarn purchase?  really i’m itching to use this lace pattern in a circular shawl, so we’ll see.  first, christmas gifts must be knit!

i used a size 7 or 8 needle and altered the lace pattern a wee bit.  all i have to say is thank goodness i changed lace patterns to something more baby brain friendly.  that way it didn’t take me 2 more years to finish. raveled here.

knits!

now, with the wee one at almost three and a half months old, i feel like i’m getting a bit back in the swing of things. and to that front, i’ve been knitting!

the gift lace has grown

and i spun! a fiber club colorway from the past.

i’m making the bean a romper, which might just fit him now since i didn’t pay any attention to gauge (ahem.) so i better hurry!

and this next week, there will be dyeing! yay! when i’ll get the time to re-skein all of this dyeing, i don’t really know… but it’s good to be crafting. and some of this is just in time for indie knit and spin and handmade arcade.

and this one has been using his knits

some day

dyeing has happened for the first time since a month before the babe was born. it felt really good.

and besides getting fiber club done, i also dyed two colorways for the shop. so an update might be coming some day!

and here’s the reason for this season of less fiber… and some of my most recent knitting. you may recognize it from here. it has been frogged and changed to a lace pattern that is more mama brain friendly.

i would like to get it done (and gifted) some day!

p.s. i ordered the books. but they haven’t shipped yet for those of you waiting. thanks so so much for all of the preorders.

wow!!

let us catch up! first, thanks for all the sweet comments on the Reflection Hat pattern :) what a warm reception!

secondly – when i started selling roving in february, i did not realize how satisfying it would be to watch people make finished objects out of my dyed roving, but boy! is it.

janknit’s Handspun Fiddlehead, from this roving. more photos in her flickr if you don’t have a rav account.

julianna’s Handspun Optic Waves made from this roving.  and her blog entry

you ladies are so awesome!! beautiful beautiful works. thanks for letting me share them.

p.s. and in more personal news, i am no longer pregnant.  thanks in advance for condolences… and  i guess we try again in a month or two!

knitting!

still working on the pi shawl.  i changed to lace for the outside section and at one point messed it up and had to rip all 576 stitches for 2 1/2 rounds.  ugh.  but now i’m back in business.  i need 10 repeats of the lace, and i have 7 done.  yay!  getting there.

pondering making this sweater for myself for october, breastfeeding, cuddling, and slinging. not a pattern i would have even thought about making until i saw the one in the link above.  brilliant!!  i even bought the pattern already.

the other thing i’ve been knitting in my dreamlike state can be described as a square. an 8×8, specifically.

these are for the charity knitting group through my church… 50/50 acrylic wool, and most importantly, washable.  i like this yarn, whatever it is.  a friend donated it to my cause, and i’m donating it back to this cause. i guess what goes around comes around!

i’ve also been working on and off on some little knits for the 4!! babies i know are due this june-august.  you probably won’t be allowed to see those until delivery of both the children (ha!) and the knit.

what are you knitting?

two old shale smoke rings

and a partridge in a pear tree.

my free pattern

and the new one on the front page of knitty.

similarities:
feather and fan
blues/greys
it is a smoke ring

differences:
yarn – weight, make up etc. – needle size, cast on number etc.
beads!
picot bind off (very pretty)

and you can see the differences. mine is the super utilitarian cousin – made at a particular time in a particular place for a particular person with a particular yarn. mostly, it’s beautiful because feather and fan is lovely and because of the yarn. yarn and stitch dependent you might say.

the one on knitty is much much more glamorous, light, airy, almost for a 1940s movie star – artsy and beautiful. the beads and the picot edge are perfect little details to make it even more classy.

the ‘ice queen’ is also blocked to flare at the top and the bottom, where as i think that would have looked very silly with mine because of the heaviness of the fabric. (i also intentionally made mine wider so that the person wearing it would look less like a worm – and to note, i don’t think that the knitty one makes people look like worms either. guess it depends how you wear it though, cause on ravelry? there are worms.)

now, let us talk about utility. the ‘ice queen’ – not so good for my mother-in-law in alaska, but perhaps perfect for california where the designer is from. and not so bad for pittsburgh where i am now – it’s a downpour and 53 degrees – not really super warm wool hat weather. different patterns, different spaces.

this exploration has been brought to you by the feather and fan stitch (aka the old shale stitch). go try it out today. if you’re not inspired by smoke rings – and you very well may not be – (confession – i’m mostly not inspired by smoke rings… shhh) the misty garden scarf from scarf style and this the luxe neckwarmer* from knit 2 together use the same pattern (ravelry links). but truth be told, just cast on with something from the above tutorial. easy peasy lace and so pleasurable. here are some of the things that i’ve done with old shale:

and if you’re on ravelry, you can check out the gallery of both smoke rings here:
ice queen
old shale smoke ring
if you’re noting that there are way more ice queens than old shales, mine didn’t get nearly the press :)

*and yes, i’ve made many feather and fan neck warmers and no, i didn’t steal the pattern from this one :)

feather and fan triangle shawl

from folk shawls by cheryl oberle
size 8 needles
ingredients:
recycled sweater wool – the sweater was thrifted by my friend sarah in new york, mailed to me in vancouver
cascade lana d’oro 50% alpaca/50% wool
frog tree merino (inherited from sue)
edging – sweatpants grey cascade 220, overdyed by me

the only thing i altered in this pattern was to stop doing the feather and fan sequence 6 repeats early. even with stopping early, my grandmother is a lot smaller than me, so it will probably be a bit big for her. i like the way it looks and would consider doing this modification again.

as you may know from previous posts, i was planning to keep this shawl one solid color. when i ran out of wool, i had to spit spliced all of my remaining balls of the pink into one ball to use for the lace section.   i decided later that it needed a bit more lace than the pink had to offer, so i started piling wool around the edging in different combinations. my grandmother is not particularily fond of wool, so i not only needed good colors for the edging, but also soft wools. i was also careful to not make it look to scrappy and like i ran out of yarn. i’m pleased and think the edging actually looks quite nice. hope she likes it!

overall a thoroughly enjoyable knit. the yarn had a lovely feel and i do like garter stitch. i might be a substantial shawl girl… which i guess makes sense since i already love lace done in larger yarns.  plus i’m cold all the time and i can’t imagine a lace weight shawl being all that warm.

my favorite part (besides the whole knitting something for a loved one…) was learning a few new things about shawl shaping. i made ‘tails’ for the first time (seen above) and doing that step also made the top of the shawl curve a bit so that it stays on better over the shoulders. i’ve also never completed a shawl that started at the back of the neck. i love how the final rows (although very long) make the outside edge of the shawl, opening up many doors for contrasting edgings. much less awkward if you run out of yarn like i happened to do on this one.

now to put it in the mail!

’tis the season

the craft fairs are over (yay!) and the last one was redemptive of the other two just by the atmosphere and the people who showed up. i like the ‘i made it’ markets quite a bit. and i did in fact buy two nice little subu recycled books from emily. one for me and one for ben. here’s mine:

and what’s that sticking out of the top? i couldn’t resist picking up some of the knitting christmas stamps… although the knit stitches are upside down (snicker snicker – giggle).

that done, christmas and commission crafting are in full swing. i’m hoping to have the box off to my family in mt on friday. so the grandma shawl, she’s blocking. i’ll give you the rundown when i take the final pics later this week.

and it’s not just me doing chrismasy stuff – our household decorated for the holidays last night. our roommates had a playmobile creche that they had been very good and not opened when they bought it a couple of months ago. so we all put it together and now it’s on the mantle. i couldn’t resist posting a picture of the sheep… baaaa.

other decorating happened too, just this fit the blog theme :)