Life's a Stitch

Thanks to Emma, who sent me her list of yarn substitutes for the Alice Starmore Marina sweater. I used her list to do yet another conversion while consulting with a Jamieson and Smith colour card. After three translations I was able to adjust the colours to more closely match the ones in the photo in Woolcraft. I am gracious to all those who helped try to find the yarn in the old "put up" and was finally able to place an order right here in Canada. The shipping cost to order from Scotland was going to be thirty British pounds! So, in the interest of economy, I lucked out. I’m sure the amount of time spent in deciphering colours will be directly proportional to the amount of time it takes to knit this project. OK, I’m a knitting masochist.

A new milestone has been reached in our house. Daughter #1 has bought her first car. What a feeling of freedom that must be for her. She was going to name it Clifford the Big Red Car, but after seeing the colour, "Harold’s Purple Crayon" might be more suitable. Her pride and joy is a ’99 Chrysler Cirrus, previously driven by a sweet older Jehovah’s witness lady from Jamaica.

I was at Chicks With Sticks the other week showing off my Charlotte’s Web shawl and someone asked where I bought the pattern. I realized that I’ve never blogged about that strange event. I had made up my mind to knit the shawl and stopped by five yarn shops in Washington looking for the pattern. A the last shop, in Anacortes, I was told that they didn’t carry the pattern or Koigu yarn, but was directed to yarn of a similar weight. I reached up above my head to pull a skein from its cubby when a leaflet fell out of the same cubby and hit me on the head. I have witnesses. I looked at the paper and it was a Charlotte’s Web pattern. I was destined to knit that shawl. The woman who worked at the store didn’t have a clue how that pattern got there, but she gladly sold it to me.

Just about finished with the triangular shawl and I’ve started on the flower basket bag, having knit two of the roses and two of the leaves. I love Lamb’s Pride’s stitch definition.  Decided to knit the body of the bag in the round, adding 16 extra stitches. The gauge on the Lambs Pride bulky is 3.5 stitches per inch on size 10.5 US needles, however, I was getting four on size 13’s! Ripped it back and will restart on size 15’s! And I thought I had become a loose woman.

Bryant’s birthday was on Earth Day. Prior to his birth, erroneously predicted for May, I had the name Forrest on my list of possibilities. When the blessed event happened on April 22nd I changed my mind thinking he’d be teased unmercifully for the coincidence or people would assume his parents were hippies, thirty years late, who name their kids of the earth. I know parents who have named babies Jade, Stormy, and Winter. So here’s my baby, who at fifteen, elected to postpone his celebration since dad was in the hospital. 

After a meeting of the minds (the pharmacist, the IV nurse and the discharge nurse) at his bedside, Chuck was discharged from the hospital into the care of a once a day visiting nurse. Each afternoon of his hospitalization Chuck called me with a list of items for me to bring on my next visit. On the last day he requested Miss Vicky’s potato chips, fresh fruit, cans of Coke, the laptop and DVD’s and then he cracked up. "You know I’m suffering from extreme boredom when I request a toenail clipper!" It was good to hear him laugh as his sense of humour dropped significantly after Ron, his roommate with the knee replacement, was discharged from the hospital first. We’ll have the nurse for ten more days and then hopefully we can put this behind us.

I stopped knitting Jeannie’s triangular shawl until I can dig up a tape measure. It’s looking fairly large and she is a petite person:

Update: We’re waiting for another set of tests before they can release Chuck from the hospital. So far, no bacteria has been identified. Last night, however, he looked like his old self again after they unhooked him from all tubes and drains except the PICC line for antibiotics and allowed him to put some weight on his leg. Sue, his roommate’s wife and I struck a good deal – she hates to stay by herself in a motel and I like to eat out. So she stayed here and took me out to breakfast and dinner! Really, it would have been miserable going through this alone. She and her husband had us laughing all the time.   

I took a day off last week to get my last year’s taxes done. Not 2004, but the 2003 ones. Revenue Canada has been sending me nasty letters to remind me to file. It’s not like I owe them anything, but I guess they only want to know how much of my money they get to keep. So, off I went to dig up the tax stuff. Oh look, the plants need watering. They will certainly die if I don’t water them right this minute. Back to the taxes, sitting in front of the computer. Oh look, an e-mail from Uli. The taxes can wait another couple of minutes. OK now, maybe if I figure out something to reward myself with when I get my return I’ll be more motivated. What was that website with the great deals on Noro? Half hour later. It must be time for lunch. Quick bathroom stop. Oh look, all those Clinique samples are cluttering up the vanity. I’ll take a few minutes to organize them. Four mascaras, two dramatically different moisturizers, one seven day scrub and five cosmetic bags later I make it out of the bathroom. Oh look, there’s my triangular shawl project calling out to me. "Knit me, purl me, come on, how long can a row or two take?" Five rows later, back to the taxes. Taking bets whether I got them done or not? Wait, I have to upload some photos for this post:

Is it my imagination or are the carpet, shawl and Gracee all the same colour? I’m in a wheaty-beige phase. In fact I’ve been in that phase for awhile. My past three houses have all had the same colour carpet. Oh yeah, the taxes. Yes, I completed the 2003 ones, still have the 2004 ones to go. But I have a good excuse this week.

Thanks everybody for your concern during this crisis. Chuck will stay in the hospital until they can identify what bacteria is causing the problem, then will send him home for IV antibiotics through a PICC line (a catheter to a major vein just above the heart) for at least two weeks. I have to get that bedroom clean and organized lest the home care nurse think that the room was the cause of his contamination!

I consider my family life as generally one of joy, but hard work. After this year, however, I realize how much weirdness there is especially with health flukes. Yesterday Chuck woke up with a sore knee. By the end of the workday he was in excruciating pain. I took one look at this huge purple knee, thinking flesh eating disease, and told him emphatically that he needed to see a doctor. Amazingly he agreed and visited a local clinic. The dr there advised him to get to the hospital immediately. On the way to the ER he developed a very high fever and uncontrollable shakes. After a four hour socialized mediciney wait he saw another dr who put him on IV antibiotics and enough morphine to keep him happy, sort of. Today he had arthroscopic surgery to clean out the infection and was told it was a good thing he sought timely treatment as there could have been more significant bone damage had he waited. It’s something called septic arthritis. OY! I did get significant knitting done; there’s a positive aspect to everything. The other positive thing is that his hospital roommate, a nice older gentleman having his second knee replacement, was over from a small community a ferry ride away and we arranged for his wife to stay at our house rather than commute while he is in the hospital. She and I shared a bottle of wine tonight and were amazed at how much we had in common; other than husbands hospitalized for their respective knees.

My new project is the shawl for a wonderful woman who was Elina’s substitute mom while away at college. This woman was Elina’s former boyfriend’s aunt, who employed her throughout her college years, had her over on holidays and provided a motherly shoulder to cry on when needed. I’m knitting thoughts of thanks into this project, a triangular garter stitch shawl made from Lang Tonga held together with a solid colour Estelle Watercolour, both in champagne tones.

It’s complete – Elina’s bias shawl made from Midas – but that’s Mari modelling it. Due to its stretchy, drapey nature I crab stitched around the outside edge. I thought this yarn was difficult to knit with, but crocheting was nearly impossible. It took a long time but I’m happier with the product. Someone commented that this shawl was pretty enough to be considered jewelry. It was expensive enough to be considered jewelry! I hope she’ll wear it more than once. Oh thank goodness this project is finished. 

At Chicks With Sticks, one of the women had bought extravagant bamboo yarn and continued the splurge by buying ebony knitting needles. "Why," my husband asked, "is knitting bamboo yarn on bamboo needles not Kosher (like mixing dairy with meat)?" Clever, I thought, but good he recognizes that there are different kinds of knitting needles.

And if you haven’t seen this, it’s worth a laugh – Gangsta Knitters.

You always hear the question "If you had one last opportunity to travel where would you like to go?" My version, "If you had one last project to knit what would it be?" Let’s qualify that – there would be no budgetary limitations. My knitting dream is an Alice Starmore sweater, but realistically there is no way I can spend almost $300Cdn on a kit from Virtual Yarns.  However, I am a good shopper and found the pattern for A.S.’s Marina in a discontinued book called Woolcraft. Flora would have been my first choice, but Marina is good. Currently most A.S. patterns are only sold en kit directly from A.S. herself. Her books are available on e-Bay at over $100 US! So $13.95 for Woolcraft was a bargain.

Obstacle #2, purchasing yarn for Marina. There is a brouhaha in the knitting world about A.S. and her yarn, which used to be produced by Jamieson in Scotland. To make a very long story short, if you can find one of her patterns it can be knit with her yarn or Jamieson’s. The yarn alone is pricey either way.

Obstacle #3. Export rules have changed and the yarn format from Europe has recently changed. A.S. patterns were designed with the old "put-up" in mind which had more yardage than the new version. The price is the same for both, but you need more skeins of the new put-up than the old.

Obstacle #4. The photo in Woolcraft (as above) appears to be in a different colourway than the pattern calls for. I have found several suppliers that have the yarn, mostly in the old put-up, for the colours as specified in the pattern, not the colours in the photo.

Dilemma – Do I go for the original colourway that is brighter, a little more bluey greeny than I would like, or do I take the time to order a colour card to select my own colours and risk availability only in the new, more expensive format? Or does anyone know of a reasonable alternative yarn to Jamieson, Jamieson and Smith or Virtual Yarns? I need something that comes in many colours as this pattern calls for 24 colours.

Don’t you hate these little complications? Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket and if I win I could buy the original kit. I hear the pattern is autographed by A.S. herself.

Keep dreaming and have a good weekend.

I’m cheating today, this is a copy of a post I added to the Flower Basket Knitalong:

I’m in, like I need another project to work on. But I’m so close to finishing my current shawl that I can rationalize it. I bought the yarn the last time I was over the border and the sneaky stuff jumped onto my needles so I could see what a rose might look like. I’ve adapted the pattern slightly:

1. Else inspired me to use Lamb’s Pride bulky at a much lower cost than the Burleyspun or the yarn the pattern called for. She knit hers on size 13 needles so it’s slightly under gauge. I plan on adding 16 extra stitches (2 extra repeats of the trellis) and adapting the bottom to fit. Has anyone else (no pun intended) done this?
2. I’ll do the top rim in black instead of the green so that I’m not in for another skein of yarn. I already bought an extra black so my handles can be longer; more like shoulder straps.
3. I’ll do the handles on a corking tool as they look very nice and even when felted.
4. My roses will be pink and red.

Wish me luck, and remember, “Life’s a Stitch.”

An update on my current project, Elina’s shawl is 75% complete.

This is a sequel to my February 7th post where, years later, I was told of events in my children’s lives that occurred right under my nose. After a friend sent me a link to a Shar Pei dog undergoing an extreme makeover, Bryant told me how he and a friend (who will remain anonymous lest his mother read my blog and not allow him over again) would challenge each other to how many clothes pins they could pin on their arm. It was a contest of endurance since clothespins on arms aren’t entirely painless. Now that they are teens I should be grateful they aren’t competing for the number of piercings. Did you know the plural of piercing is not in the spell check? That proves their unacceptability to mothers. I remember reading a book as a child, was it Little Women or the Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, where one of the girls would keep a clothespin on her nose to assure it remained in its upturned state. What price glory? Here is Bryant re-enacting the clothespin trick. Good thing he already has an upturned nose.

     I start my watercolour class tonight, so for a while I’ll be posting three times per week as time will be a bit more limited.

     This is Elina’s shawl 50% complete: