Life's a Stitch

Ok, I’m just knitting along on my Lady Eleanor wrap, in Noro Silk Garden, which, by the way was a terrific bargain at 40% off, and all of a sudden – I’m knitting nothing. The yarn just disintegrated mid stitch. I’ve knit with Silk Garden before, and besides a knot or two in each skein, and occasional detritus that Noro is known for, I have never encountered yarn that goes poof mid stitch. It’s usually on part of the yarn that appears unspun; the cottony looking fluffy bits. You gently pull it and it comes completely apart. 

It gets worse – I’m using two colourways of Silk garden and it’s happening on both. It usually gets better a few feet later, but it’s a frequent occurence. It also will require an unreasonable amount of end weaving. I know the yarn wasn’t on sale because of this – the entire store was 40% off – but I’m getting that "you get what you pay for" feeling and I don’t like that feeling as I am the queen of bargain hunting. And with such bargains comes that rubber stamped receipt that says "final sale." Yeesh.

After the first couple of incidents, I took the time to rewind the yarn, but these weak spots didn’t show up in the process. They wait and attack only in mid stitch.The re-winding, however, allows a pretty preview of colours to come:

Have a great weekend, I’ll be thinking of you while I’m yarn crawling in Seattle. And if you haven’t entered my blog 2nd anniversary contest, go a few posts back and try your luck.

This weekend I’m going on another cruise! It’s on the Dawn Princess and it cost $60! OK, so it’s for a total of 15 hours and I’m sharing a cabin with my knitting buddy Marsha, her husband, and 27 year old son. We sail from Seattle to Vancouver. What the heck, good food, good company, what’s to complain about?

But wait, there’s more. I’m taking the train to Seattle after work on Thursday and Marsha is taking me on a yarn crawl on Friday. There is lots of fun in my future.

What will I take along to knit? Marina requires her own suitcase so she’s being left behind. The lucky winner is Lady Eleanor from Scarf Style. It’s my new entrelac project in Noro Silk Garden. This one is destined for my office, for those times that the air conditioning feels more like refrigeration.

You guys are wonderful. Thank you so much for your blogiversary wishes. What a relief if it was to find out that so many people are actually reading this blog. I find that I can’t trust the stats page on Typepad, so I never accurately know what’s going on. Today, for example, it tells me I’ve had one reader since midnight. Your feedback is appreciated and I’ll be sure to make an effort to post more about Marina and Gracee.

I would love to have the opportunity to knit with each of you in person. You have an open invitation to look me up if you are ever in the Vancouver area. Heck, even if you live thousands of miles away and have always wanted to see YVR, knitting is a good excuse. Right Ellen? And Dorothy, you live close enough you have no excuse. OK, I’m gushing here, but it’s meant with all sincerity.

Relieved again – I went in for my second diagnostic mammogram and an ultrasound. When the technician applied the gel I was pleasantly surprised at its warmth. Usually it feels like like having ice jelly spread across your breast. I made a comment and she told me I scored brownie points because she saw me knitting in the waiting room! There you have it, another benefit of knitting. After meeting with the radiologist, in what seemed an unreasonably drawn out process, involving gelled up breast and armpit, I was told it was just a new cyst to add to my growing collection of things lumpy. So that’s it for another year. It’s a relief and I do feel well looked after in this system of socialized medicine. But then again, I’m not sick. I really don’t want the opportunity to test the system any more this year.

To keep part of my promise, here is a photo, no caption necessary:

This month, Life’s A Stitch (the original – don’t be fooled by imitations), is two! To celebrate, I’m hosting a contest. So talk to me, give me some feedback. Tell me what you like or don’t like. Isn’t that brave? Each comment relating to my blogiversary this month will get an entry.

The prize? Enough yummy Fleece Artist DK weight non-fuzzy mohair, in the Pinata colourway, to make a scarf, plus a copy of my herringbone rib scarf pattern. Not that you have to make that scarf, the yarn would make a nice Wavy or maybe a slightly heavier weight Branching Out from Knitty. If you win, you can talk to me about the prize if you want. I’ve got lots of neat scarf stuff in my stash and I’m flexible.

Free yarn, free pattern, I think I’ll make a comment. I’m going to make it a really nice one in hopes the random entry generator recognizes the positive energy nice comments produce.

Thanks to you all: the regulars, the drop-ins and the lurkers (that’s such an unappealing name for an innocent behaviour), for the taking the time to visit my blog. I hope you keep reading. Now, try your luck and leave a comment.

How do you justify occasionally spending $18 for yarn for a pair of socks or $48 for a scarf? You’d never spend $18 on a pair of socks in the store. As long as I don’t need the money for the necessities of life like food and mortgage I can justify it:

1. The time I take knitting the project keeps me out of trouble and away from opportunities to spend way more on random things I don’t need.

2. It’s a good value timewise. A movie costs in excess of $10 and it’s over in two hours.

3. It’s healthy – $18 could buy a lot of chocolate.

4. You can wear what you made. Try wearing $18 worth of chocolate on any part of your body other than your hips, where it ultimately settles.

5. Use can use the item as a gift. Unless, of course the recipient would prefer $18 worth of chocolate.

6. I don’t smoke, eat much chocolate or go to bars.  I only have two magazine subscriptions (a previous addiction), and don’t spend money on TV, certainly I can splurge guiltfree on yarn.

Now I feel better. I hope you do, too.

This is a a post about Touch Me, an exorbitantly priced,  ultra soft seductive yarn. It woos you with its sensuous hand. I am ashamed to admit I have given in to this temptation twice. But eventually, as in all steamy relationships, the hormones subside and reality sets in. It’s a proven scientific fact.

Touch me is chenille made from rayon and wool. Chenille has a tendency to worm. This means no matter how careful or skilled a knitter you are, the stitches possess the ability to seek freedom. They wiggle and slither on their own, until they pop right out, looking like a dropped stitch. Everything looks fine and then boing – out pops a loop! Some of my loops were long enough to clip and tie into knots that sure as heck better stay in place.

Now, they tell you in the books, that you have to felt Touch Me and this seals the fate of wayward stitches. Drown those suckers in hot agitating water and fry them in the dryer and they’ll learn their lesson and stay in place. Note: before felting, it is important to weave in every last end. If they are left exposed, they come out of the dryer naked – all that’s left is a scrawny black thread. Same goes for really large worms. It is better to tie them off then have a loopy thread in the middle of your scarf. Of course, you could take the chance, hope that in the shrinking process that worm gets swallowed back into the body, and tie the naked threads afterwards.

The other part good about felting Touch Me, is that it gives your project a lovely crushed velvet look. But before drying, there’s a moment of sheer panic, when it feels hard as a rock and appears crushed to death:

Mine is in the dryer now, and having had the opportunity to use this yarn before, I’m not as terrified. Then why in my stomach churning? There’s the timer on the dryer!

The finished product, first before felting, then felted:

One of the worms was still there, although smaller. It was interesting, the Vintage Velvet pattern from Scarfstyle, said to expect a 10% rate of shrinkage with a finished length of 68". Mine actually grew in length, from 60" to 64" but shrunk in width. I was surprised at how much shorter mine turned out since I omitted the first and last stitch of each row, hoping to be able to conserve yarn.

A note to Marsha, if you’re reading this. You are usually there when this happens to me. Please, please don’t let me get involved with Touch Me again. Remind me of the anguish. Don’t let me make the same mistake twice three times. Oh, but it feels so good at the time.

UPDATE:

Thinking about worming I’m wondering if it has to do with how the yarn is wound onto the spool. I had four skeins from one dye lot and one from another. The last one wormed more than the first four. I also needed to untwist the yarn from this skein quite frequently.

I was giving Gracee dog her ear drops today. It’s difficult since she has the ability to close her ears. That got me thinking what if we could close our ears like she can? It would be a physical way of doing "I’m not listening." We could adjust the volume of life by partially shutting our ears. It would be a method of selective listening (like some people we know need another way of doing that). When in the presence of foul language we could command our children to "Close your ears!"  This one gets filed in the "someone’s got to think about these things" category.

Another summer finished object. This one is a gift, a combination of serpentine ribbon and variegated mohair held together.

What if I can finish two more summer projects this weekend, bringing the total to three scarves and the Shoalwater Shawl? Oops, I spoke too soon. Two hours after writing this I was on the last 24 stitches of the Shoalwater and what did I discover? A major dropped stitch mistake seven rows down. That will teach me to knit in LED flashlight glow while watching Lost! Now the question is, do I pick out 2800 stitches or frog it back and pick up 400? Sometimes that takes the same amount of time.

And what if you were one of those people on Lost? Wouldn’t you have picked up some sticks and started knitting coconut hair by now?

I love the story about the difference between an optimist and a pessimist: two kids enter a room full of horse poop. One says, "Boy, it smells like shit in here."  The second says, "I know there’s a pony in here somewhere." I am generally in the pony camp. Even when life gives you a bite on the but, or three.

Yes, that is another broken Knit Pick Options cable. This time I was working on a much lighter weight project when it happened. I would seriously be afraid to use them on a complicated lace project. Of the three interchangeable kits I own, these might be the nicest to knit with, but the Boye’s are the most reliable. My Denise set has been left in the dust.

Remember when my blog turned into an ACL graft blog over Christmas, when I spent eight weeks on crutches? At my nine month followup visit, my graft has been declared a technical failure. It appears that it is still somewhat attached, but not reliable enough to give up the brace. Ever. It’s not the worst thing in the world, just a let down.

The icing on the cake – being called back for a third mammogram and an ultrasound. This is not unusual for me, so I’m not extremely worried. But, the last time, with the contortionistic angle at which they had me posed, I was afraid stitches were going to be required right between the girls. Oh mama.

Today my middle child returns from her eight month coop placement in Toronto. She’ll only be home for a few days before going back to school a few hours away, but it’s a lot better than a few thousand miles away! See? There is a pony in here.

This is part two in the Catholic knitting category. As a child, when confronted by a daunting task, we were advised to "offer our actions up to the souls in Purgatory," the Catholic version of grin and bear it, except that as an added bonus, you were accumulating credits to get someone promoted from Purgatory, a holding area for those souls not quite good enough to enter the Pearly Gates. Got that?

In my last post I talked about undoing the bind off for my daughter’s wedding sweater and picking up the 350+ stitches. One row into the re-knitting of the shawl collar, I noticed that in the row below, there was a loose stitch every three stitches, from casting off with a larger needle, stretching the stitch below. So, I ripped out an additional three rows and picked up those stitches again. I started knitting again to discover a mistake three rows previous. You got it, I ripped it out again and picked up for the third time the 350+ stitches, thinking this would have been a good example of an opportunity to "offer it up to the souls in Purgatory." Someone surely would have made the transition into Heaven based upon 1150 stitches.

New yarn alert: I was in Michael’s the other day and saw Paton’s wool-soy stripes, new for the Fall. Interesting medium weight yarn, with a soft halo, in colours named of flowers. It would make a lovely multidirectional scarf. And knitting good news: I had a call from the woman at Marilyn’s in B’Ham (see my last post) and she has a ball of Touch Me in her personal stash that she is willing to sell me. Stay tuned for a photo of a finished Vintage Velvet scarf in the next two weeks.

Finally, does anyone know to which type of bird these feathers belong? Over the years I have picked up three of this kind in different neighbourhoods. The shaft is bright coral orange in colour. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and can’t think of a possibility in the wild. Could they be from pet birds?

I’ll tell you what makes me cringe – finding out a pubic that would be public (thanks, Marsha) toilet seat is wet AFTER you sit on it. I check each time, but sometimes wet is clear. Eeeewwww. My knitting buddy, Marsha the nurse, tells me no worries, urine is most often sterile. Phew, I feel better now.

I may have solved the problem with my Touch Me scarf. I stopped into Marilyn’s yarn shop in Bellingham, to see if they possibly had one skein of the red. Although there was none in the store, she offered to sell me one from her personal stash at the price she originally paid for it. She’ll call me this week if it indeed matches. While I was there, I bought a skein of Socks That Rock in the Lagoon colourway. Marilyn’s is one of three stores in WA that sells STR.