Life's a Stitch

I’ve spent too much time recently on simple projects and am up for a challenge. I took the plunge and ordered the Autumn Silk Cardigan from Ram Wools.  It’s a light weight lacey knit with a v-neck. Should look elegant in black Estelle Tussah Silk. And I ordered a Fiber Trends pattern – the Easy Lace Poncho, made all in one piece. I’ll reserve judgement on the easy part, it took me 12 hours once to sew a two hour pattern. I’ll use some Wool In The Woods I have in my stash – a slubby rayon in blues and rose. I exercised  some self control and ended my order there. There will be no more yarn shopping for a while. I mean it.

An update on the serious building prject, AKA the Great Wall. Nine pallets down, five to go.

While travelling in WA, we stopped at the LYS near our weekend place. It’s nice enough, but has a huge inventory of Fonty yarns and not enough of others I read about in knitting blogs. Feeling proud of myself for having resisted temptation, while walking toward the door I am lured to an amazing blend of colour and texture. It is the magic of Jamaique pictured here. To top it off, one skein is 160 metres, enough to make a scarf. A woman can never have too many scarves. Ask the French. And no human can have enough colour and texture in their life. Ask me.

I am now caught in the wool web. How come I didn’t notice that soft and fuzzy felted hat? A must have, two more skeins added to my purchase. I know I’d have a hard time convincing you, but I am very good at resisting the temptation to spend. Added up, that’s $100 US dollars in two days. And that’s only for the knitting stuff.

This weekend I also succumbed to the Musk shea butter massage soap. It’s supposed to be a necessity for the knitting bag in order to soothe those dry chapped hands after a hard day of knitting. Chuck says, by the name he’s not sure if it belongs in the kitchen, bathroom or bedroom.

That was the high, now to the low side. I was just at the vet for the third time this week with Gracee. She had an eye infection that wasn’t responding to meds. Yesterday they discovered her cornea had ruptured. She was put on three different drops and told to come in today for a followup. Today they discovered a small pricker embedded in her eye, above the lid. The root of the problem! Thank goodness. On a sad note while we were there a kind man brought in a fluff ball of a dog asking for it to be checked out as it had just been hit on the freeway. I thought that the dog was behaving pretty well for having been hit. What was I thinking? It turns out the dog was DOA. It was just a puppy without a collar or any identifying marks. Someone is going to be really upset. I am.

Why do I get such a rush from yarn? I fear it’s an illness. While travelling this weekend I found a yarn shop to end all yarn shops in Everett, WA. It’s aptly called Great Yarns, a house converted into a yarn shop. There are rooms devoted to different yarns; a bulky room, a worsted room, a sock weight room, a novelty yarn room, be still my beating heart. I have a habit of milling around knit shops without buying anything. Not this time. I was overcome with the urge to buy Touch Me in the deepest of aubergine (sounds better than eggplant) and Tartlette, a tease of a ribbon, in the springiest of greens, kissed with edges of pink roses. Whoa, she has it bad.

Talk about a religious experience, I was with two non-knitters and one of them had a conversion experience buying yarn for not one, but two projects.

I was in a knit shop and they were selling "Seeds of Hope" patterns for a fund raiser, designed by Deanna Lum Sisler, a two time breast cancer survivor. The patterns were knit in seed stitch on gigundous needles using five strands of textured yarns, in pink of course. I bought the pattern with some stash yarn in mind, though not necessarily pink.

I have had this in my stash since a trip to Germany two years ago. It looks pretty in this picture, but it’s not as good as it looks. Dull grey and blue paper-like stuff twisted around black merino. I have added some kid silk mohair and dazzle thread to the formula, large, dangerous looking needles and a winter Seeds of Hope scarf it will be.

I’m off this weekend for a women’s weekend in Washington.  Two knitters and six knit shops within a 45 minute radius. Yes!

How did that happen? A case of over confidence, lack of accurate counting and a stitch marker with a mind of its own lead me down the path to the frog pond. Caryl, she is history.

I have a hard time assigning gender to knitting projects, any inanimate object for that matter. I just tried to do it and it feels awkward. Chuck works in the transportation industry where ships are females and trains are males (go figure). I’m leaving my knitting projects as neither, they are just knitting projects.

But this was an opportunity. I’ve been wondering what Caryl’s Kerchief would look like if I purled back instead of knit back every other row. I think stockinette’s little V’s show off colour better than garter stitch, so here was my chance. It looks pretty good although I don’t think the lace pattern shows up as well. Maybe when its (she’s, nope, still doesn’t feel right) blocked.

When my sister and I were little we’d go through my mother’s McCall’s magazines and play Ummm and Uckkk. We’d look at pictures of food and rate them, one or the other. When my own kids were young we played it, too, with Canadian Living Magazine. Tonight the game resurfaced with a twist. Bryant, more sophisticated at 14, was looking through the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue and invited me to a game of Ummm and Uckkk. That was fun: "The Peaceful Progression Wake Up Clock – Ummmm; the Della Robbia Tabletop Tree – Uckkk. The 3-in-1 Rotating Game Table – Ummmm; the Cordless Lighted Planter Baskets – Uckkk. I’m letting my mind wonder here. The Anny Blatt Honeymoon Mohair – Ummmm, Bernat Fur Out – Uckkk. It’s all a matter of preference.

Not much  progress to report on the kerchief. I’m going down to Bellingham, WA this weekend and will pick out beads for the edge.

Does this ever happen to you: out of the blue a childhood memory surfaces, clear as day. When I was writing the post "Show and Tell" I remembered starting a new school in second grade. I was wondering about when they had show and tell and the teacher informed me that at this school it was called "discussion." La Di Da. Then yesterday, I read a blog that referred to rum and all of a sudden I remembered my father taking me to a tiny family run rum distillery in Puerto Rico. They made the rum in a barn. I googled it and it’s still there. The label is still the same. I hadn’t thought about discussion or Barrilito Rum in years.  I wonder what else is lurking in that brain of mine. Hopefully all good stuff.

Caryl’s Kerchief is progressing. At the end of each row I love to squish the stitches together and enjoy the rainbow that is Koigu. Yes, those are my sheepy jammies in the background.

We have a new expression in our house. It is the equivalent of "Off the record." So, if somebody wants to say something that won’t be posted they start the sentence with "No blog." It’s nothing new. I write a local newspaper column on parenting issues and my kids learned that nothing is sacred, they needed to be careful what they said in case they might be quoted. As in my eldest child’s comment in response to my saying "It used to be that, as your Mom, I knew everything and now that you’re a teen you think I know nothing." Her answer: "I always knew you knew nothing it just took me 14 years to get up the nerve to tell you." Or how about when she was four and she asked me what babies eat. I told her they either have milk from their mother’s breast or they have formula. She then asked how she was fed. I told her that she was breast fed and her reply, "Well, I wanted formula." Spunky kid is now graduating with her BSN.

On to knitting. "I’m knitting with Koigu woooah" (sung to the tune of I’m Walking on Sunshine) and don’t it feel good!! That’s another Caryl’s kerchief, this time for me, in colour P112.

I have just finished winding a particular skein of Koigu FOUR times. I’m pretty adept at using the swift and ball winder, but this skein just wouldn’t cooperate. Fist time it wrapped around the post of the winder and I didn’t catch it until it was too late. Second time I couldn’t find the end and ended up pulling the entire thing out and winding it by hand. Try again. Have you tried using the winder from a hand wound ball of yarn? The darn thing runs around the room like a crazed mouse being chased by a cat. It got caught around the wheels of my chair more than once. That time I wound it from the wrong end, because I couldn’t find the right one, and wanting consistency from skein to skein, wound it once more from the right end. And that’s the end of the story. Thank goodness.

Gracee slept through it all.

My Koigu has come, my Koigu has come! Oh what a simple pleasure; it’s nice to be easily pleased. I just had a check-in call to home and was told I have two knitting related packages waiting for me. I have only ordered one, so my curiosity is roused. Do I go home for lunch in the driving rain or do I savor the anticipation. I will wait.

Home from work, finally:
Driving home, I didn’t remember my Koigu until I turned the corner to my house. I opened the package and let it soak in. Those colours are something else. Darker than I expected and very different from others I had seen of the same colour number, but beautiful just the same. The other package was an exchange of my accidentally purchased duplicate Addi needles.

There are some more Caryl’s Kerchiefs in my life. If you are planning on doing one and would like a Uli style spreadsheet (OK,not as fancy as Uli’s) for keeping track of your stitches, let me know.