Hoot

Did you know that Tadpole can say "hoot"? Actually, it's more like "hooowa." And, come to think of it, she may actually be saying "owl." Either way, when my favorite toddler needs new mittens, it seems only fitting that it should be this pattern:

That's Horatio and Oren by Barbara Gregory in the Fall 2012 Twist Collective (pattern also available on Rav). I have mixed feelings about this pattern (more on that later) but there's no denying that the finished product is adorable.

Wait, did I say mittens? As in mittens, plural? You mean Tadpole has two hands? Please excuse me, I have some work to do . . .

Not sure what I was thinking

I'm really not sure why I thought this third section of Color Affection would fly by. Maybe because I love the short rows? Perhaps because I was itching to start Rams and Yowes. Or could it be that I thought the knitting fairy would come and keep plugging away at this piece when I got swamped with work this week?

Regardless of how long this takes to finish, I'm having a blast! I do truly love the short rows. (There are just a few -- ok, several . . . many . . . lots -- more than I had anticipated.)

Please excuse me while I go knit.

On a roll

Happy 4th, everyone! I'm on a roll with this midweek vacation, thanks in large part to Mr. Tinks and Frogs for letting me carve out some big chunks of "me" time today. I'm actually caught up on blog comments (for all of the comments for which I had or could find an email address for the response). It feels so good to be moving forward with a clean slate and no backlog.

So now I'm going to try to catch up on FO posts, too.  I know there are a few pieces that I finished over the last several months and have yet to talk about on the blog (Catkin springs to mind). But I have absolutely no desire to model wool wraps outside in 100 degree weather so those will just have to wait. For now, I'm going to stick with FOs for which I have pictures hiding on my hard drive.

Today you get my belated birthday present to our favorite five-year-old, which went in the mail a couple of months ago.

Little n is an enthusiastic lover of seals and requested that I knit her one for her birthday this year. Finding a seal pattern is actually quite tough. There are a few in ravelry but nothing was quite what I was looking for. 

My first thought was to modify the loch ness monster pattern that I had knit back in January. I think I started that version twice before giving up on that idea - the body shape just wasn't what I had in mind. I had spent quite a bit of time googling pictures of seals (now that's an interesting set of results in google images) to get a sense of seal anatomy. Ok, maybe I was going a bit overboard on this one but I really like n and her mother, N, and wanted to get it right.

Then I searched some more and found a vintage toy pattern on Etsy that looked closer to what I had in mind. Still not quite what I wanted, I tried to reverse engineer a smaller version of that design. I think I spent two attempts on that tack before giving up.

I finally settled on a ravelry pattern that I had seen in my initial searches: the Showoff Seal (sans ball). I used a heavier yarn - Tosh Chunky (details on my project page) - to make a bigger toy than the pattern called for. I'd really wanted to make something bigger (the seal is only about 7 or 8 inches long) but instead of resizing and trying again, I made a second one.

The last component of the gift was a "seal blanket" made with Miss Babs Sojurn, a cashmere silk yarn (one skein, held double, and worked in a subtle cable pattern with garter edges) that n had picked out at the Michigan Sheep and Wool Festival last year.

French knots for the eyes and whiskers from the Tosh Merino Light that I had slated for my Color Affection completed the piece. I'm pretty pleased with the final result and I hope n is enjoying it, too.

What did I think of the pattern? It was quick and easy (very welcome after I had had so many false starts on this project). I much prefer the flippers from the loch ness monster pattern - they came out looking more polished than the garter stitch version here. But this pattern is certainly a lot less fiddly. The body is knit in the round with a bit of short row shaping and that's it for anything tricky. It would be a great first toy pattern if you're thinking about jumping into this sort of project but are worried about the finishing and other finicky aspects of amigurumi knits.

No sheep yet

I told myself that I wouldn't cast on for Rams and Yowes until I had finished Color Affection. The short row section is so much fun that I don't regret that decision in the slightest. Yet. 

So while I plow through many more rows of garter stripes, here's a little distraction for all of us as we're waiting to play with the shetland yarn:

This is 216 yards of (oh shoot, I forgot to check the wpi again - let's call it roughly light worsted) navajo-plied BFL silk dyed in a gradient dye by Friends in Fiber. The fiber was a delightful surprise gift from blogger friend Rachel a few months ago. This was such a fun fiber to spin! BFL/silk is a glorious combination - soft with a lovely sheen, and it drafts like a dream. The color shifts from the light lime into something closer to avocado and finally into emerald. Such lovely greens!

What to do with them? Right now I'm content with fondling and petting the skein but eventually I think it'll be a cowl with some sort of simple texture to play off the color changes. Is anyone else yearning for fall weather already?

Dispatched

Blogging can lead to dangerous things . . . such as an inability to stick to a stash diet. A few weeks ago I had mentioned a certain blanket pattern. Within hours of that post, my mother and I were emailing back and forth, egging each other on to do our own private KAL. Then I discovered that there was a kit. The next thing I knew, I got an email saying that a package had been dispatched from Shetland. (There's something much more romantic about a package that has been dispatched than one that has merely been shipped, don't you think?)

All nine shades of natural J&S shetland yarns - perfect for a July knit, right. (Thank goodness we have central air!)

But first, I have some short rows and garter stripes to finish. This third section of Color Affection is why I love Veera Valimaki's work.

On a side note, I'm close to acknowledging that I'm just not going to be able to catch up on blog comments, but not quite. I'm still holding out hope. We'll see where I am at the end of the week.

Happy Monday, everyone!

In case you hadn't seen it . . .

The USOC has sent Ravelry a cease and desist letter, asking it to take down the Ravelympics. The Ravelry thread discussion starts here.

I'm speechless (actually, I have all sorts of thoughts running through my head - a lot of them reminding me that I try very hard to keep my work and knitting lives separate (and that I'm no expert in intellectual property law) - but nothing that I'm ready to share). Time to get back to work . . .

What do I do with this?

I've finished my latest spinning project a couple of weeks ago and gave it a bath last weekend. It's lovely, really lovely. The dye just glows on this particular fiber and I can tell that the future knitted fabric will have great stitch definition and drape.

So why the hesitation?

I have 340 yards of roughly dk-weight (yes, I know I really should start thinking of this in wpi) 2-ply Wensleydale. Sheen, drape, and stitch definition are all well-known qualities of Wensleydale fibers but did you notice what descriptor was missing? That's right - soft. This is not yarn for next-to-the-skin wear.

So it'll probably become some sort of accessory. Right now I'm thinking socks - the sort of nice, maybe cabled, boot socks worn over sock liners so I wouldn't have to worry about the scratchy bits. An iPad case has also come to mind but that doesn't seem quite right. Thoughts?

Regardless of what the finished product turns out to be, this was a really fun fiber to spin. 

Elizabeth gave me a gentle nudge about a year ago when she suggested that I really should try this fiber again. I'd spun up a braid of Fleece Artist Wenselydale/Teeswater (in green, of course) several years ago and had mixed feelings about the experience. The spinning itself was a breeze but I discovered that I couldn't fix any mistakes while I was going. My attempts to tease and stretch out thick slubs in the singles turned into a wadded mess - an unpleasant contrast to the smooth and sleek "untouched" singles.

When I started this project (a 5 ounce bump of Wensleydale top dyed by Chris of Briar Rose, who I just discovered has a new lace yarn in my favorite shade of green, but I digress), I was leery of trying to fix mistakes. It's actually kind of freeing to tell yourself that you'll take whatever yarn comes along and not worry too much about the little imperfections since they all even out in the end. But if you are a bit of a perfectionist like me, ignoring what should be fixable mistakes is tough to do. So I tried fixing a thick spot (pinching the singles above and below the problem section, untwisting the fibers, and gently tugging (re-drafting) the fibers to achieve the desired thickness) and it worked! It looks like my hang-up with Wensleydale was an issue with the fiber preparation of the first top I tried, not with the fiber itself. 

I'm absolutely thrilled to discover this since Wensleydale takes dye beautifully and its long staple length makes it a quick and easy fiber to spin. Now if only I could figure out what to do with it!

(Shoot, remember that green lace yarn I linked to above? I can't seem to get it out of my head. There's a particular Anne Hanson giant lace shawl that I've been mooning over for years that I think would look really lovely in this particular shade of green. The two skeins that Chris has in stock would be perfect for it . . . )