Oh my

Darling husband and I moved to a new apartment last weekend and boy does packing/unpacking/etc. put a damper on blogging. Surprisingly, I have managed to get a fair amount of knitting done over the last couple of weeks (mostly socks) and even have a few pictures. Now, if only I could find the USB cord for the camera I would even upload and post them.

Spinning? The poor wheel has been sitting unused and neglected for the last week or so and both flyers (original and WooLee Winder) are resting in the bin full of fiber. Once we get the air conditioner set up, I'll think about getting the spinning wheel going again. It's just too hot and muggy to spin without it.

That's it for now. I just thought I'd write up a quick post to say that I haven't fallen off the face of the earth and that more interesting stuff is coming (just as soon as I find that USB).

Returning to Normal

Or Not.

Husband and I got back from TNNA last night and I have been trying to get my head out of the wool fumes. Wow, that was an amazing experience. I got to meet Anne from Knitspot, Pam Allen from Classic Elite, Linda Cortright from Wild Fibers Magazine, just to name a few. Plus, the Yarn Harlot was kind enough to hold my sock.



(Apologies for the slightly blurry photo, Stephanie).

Husband and I were there with My Sister's Knits and I had a blast helping choose yarns and colors for the shop. Carol, the shop owner gave me excellent advice when she said to bring layers since the convention center was freezing. It certainly was and so I could happily debut the Green Blob, now a beautiful shawl all grown up and blocked (pleasantly warm, too). Sadly, no finished object shots yet - those will have to wait until the weekend when hopefully I can convince the darling husband to come outside and play photographer.

Now that we are home again, I spent the day knitting up sleeve #2 of the Debbie Bliss sweater that I have been working on for the shop. I hate to confess that some minor math difficulties have made this project take longer than I would really like. This afternoon I recalculated the sleeve cap (my row gauge is off - always is) for the second time. Apparently trying to do some fairly basic calculations after getting home from class at 9:30 at night makes me think that 25 stitches over 4 inches equals 5 stitches per inch. Let's just say that my initial numbers were a bit off. Now my numbers are correct and sleeve cap #2 is half-way done. Of course, I still need to rip and re-knit sleeve cap #1. Maybe this was just my subconscious trying to tell me that I do not tink nearly enough to justify my blog title.

In other wool adventures, I decided to wash a bunch of the darling husband's sweaters so that I can get them packed away for summer. It turns out that my washing machine actually does a phenomenal job. Fill the tub with lukewarm water, pour in some Soak (love that stuff), let it sit for 20+ minutes, run the spin cycle, and then lay out the sweaters to dry. It turns out that finding space for six giant sweaters was by far the hardest part of the process. It is pretty hard to get to our dining table at the moment after what I did to the living/dining room.

First, I have two sweaters from four or five years ago. The one on the left was slated to be the second sweater I ever made for the darling husband (then darling boyfriend) and I had planned to gift it to him on our first anniversary. It actually turned into sweater #3 when I realized that the big fisherman cabled mass was not going to be ready in time. The sweater on the right is one that I made during the summer and fall in the year that we were engaged (two independent occurrences, I swear).



Again, apologies for the blurry photo - the flash obliterated all the detail.

You may recognize the space in the next picture as the former home of my blocking apparatus, now doing double-duty as the sweater drying area. I had originally thought I could fit all six sweaters there - don't know what I was thinking. At the bottom we have Cobblestone, this year's birthday present. Moving clockwise to the left, we have the second finished sweater I ever gave my husband. It turns out that lopi yarns knit up at 3 and a half stitches per inch make for much faster sweaters than cables knit in dk weight yarn. At the top is a hooded sweater that I designed using the wonderful book, The Sweater Workshop. Finally on the right we have a basic raglan that I knit at least 3 years ago - I remember the apartment we were in when I knit it but can't pinpoint the time much better than that (we were there for two years).



Well, I turned the air conditioning on to try and get some of the humidity out of the air in here. I think I am just going to have to get used to the scent of wet wool for the next few days.

Tough Choice

Husband and I are off to TNNA in a few hours. Both he and my bank account are very grateful that I will not be able to purchase any of the lovelies that we see. However, I do have another dilemma: what knitting to bring? You know the deal - I want something that I can whip out of my bag and knit a few stitches here and there but it also has to be suitably impressive. I dug the front of Cromarty out of the bottom of my knitting basket to work on when knitting with a friend last weekend. I was a bit too distracted chatting while trying to figure out where I was in the chart that I had to frog the rows that I had knit and go back to where I had stopped months ago (and I honestly could not tell you when I last worked on this piece.

Here is a picture of the back from last summer. Subtract a row or two and that is about how far along I am on the front.



After last weekend, Cromarty will not be my bag knitting on this trip; rather, it will stay in the hotel. So, back to the drawing board. The perfect carry-around knitting is, after all, socks. So I thought I would bring this along to play with.



Remember my dyeing adventures from a couple weeks ago? This is the final product. I kept trying to get out on the deck and take a picture in unfiltered sunlight but we seem to have attracted a very large bee whose sole purpose in life appears to be zooming around our deck. Perhaps it likes residual fumes of furniture stain from when we refinished a couple of tables a few weeks ago. In any case, it has taken over the deck and I have stopped trying to venture out since it zooms at the door whenever I open it.

If you will excuse me, I am off to pull out Barbara Walker and swatch.

Busy Weekend

Wow, the weekend just flew right by. There was visiting (no pictures, unfortunately), pie baking, and plenty of knitting. Since this is a knitting blog, after all, I'll jump straight to that.

First off, I blocked the green blob. Here is a teaser photo until I can get some good F/O shots (probably this weekend):



Since our current apartment has hardwood floors instead of carpet, this is my blocking apparatus:



Two sets of 2x2 foam exercise mats - about $30 for the pair from Target. The packaging has a picture of a man lifting weights and helpfully says "weight bench not included." Since the mats come wrapped in plastic with a cardboard sleeve, I wonder where one might hide the weight bench. But I digress . . .

The darling husband has been working on a felted bag for me off and on for over a year. Under the guise of helping him finish it up on Saturday, I somehow managed to tack down the handles, weave in the ends, and sew up the bottom seam and gussets. I'm not quite sure how that all happened, since all I sat down to do was untangle the yarn. Probably that whirlwind pace is what made the straps end up being slightly off center (I distinctly remember calculating stitch counts so that they would line up properly). Oh well. I'm calling it a design feature. Still a little damp, but here it is:



One last thing - this weekend I got together with a good friend from college and during the visit was presented with a beautiful birthday present: a lovely handmade quilt.



I'm hoping that this will spur me on in my own never-ending quilt project. We'll just have to see.

Cold Feet

I was lazy this morning; there is just no other way to describe it. I was working in the study and complaining to myself how my toes kept getting cold and how awful that was (insert grumbling about how it is supposed to be warm on the second-to-last day in May). The smart thing to do would have been to get up and walk down the hall to the dresser in the bedroom and grab a pair of socks. But no, I was lazy, and just grabbed the recently finished hand-knit sock that was sitting on my desk. Good, one foot was warm. Another hour or so goes by and the toes on my bare foot start to feel like icicles. Do I get up and go find a complete pair of socks? No. But I do spy another lone hand-knit sock over on the bookcase and thus solve my problem. With this:



On the left is plain stockinette from Lorna's Laces, color: Pioneer (and yes, I still have to weave in the ends). On the right is a super-comfy merino/cashmere/nylon blend from Creatively Dyed.

See? Second sock syndrome can actually help keep your feet warm. To be fair, the mate of the sock on the right is on the needle and almost done and the Lorna's Laces mate is slated to start when that one is finished.

Dyeing and Other Adventures

Well, I had good intentions of posting many times over the past few weeks. During that time, I learned that not only do good intentions not write posts by themselves but they actually make it harder. The thought process usually goes something like: oh my, so many things to write about, where should I start? Oops, don't have pictures for that, I'll just wait until I gan get some light/time/you name it. Can you see where I am going with this? So this is going to be a bit random but at least it is a post and not merely good intentions.

I finished spinning up the blue-face leicester 3-ply sock yarn over the weekend. I have some gauges in my fingers from drawing out the chains for navajo-plying to prove it. 430 yards of sock weight. This is what it looked like when it was done:



Then I decided to have some fun with Kool-Aid. This is the Knitty article that I used for some pointers. After the first run through with the dye, this is what I had:



Ok, I know that the color is hard to see but suffice it to say that it was pale pink. A really pretty pale pink with subtle variations and lots of depth but I just do not wear that color. So back into the dye pot it went.

This is what it looked like after dunk number 2:



Pretty, but still pink. Back into the dye pot a third time. Hopefully I can snap a few pictures tomorrow.

Apologies to Thumper

There are some yarn shops where you feel welcome the moment you walk in the door and where you always look forward to returning. And then there are others where you will never walk in the door again.

I love a shop with a varied and tasteful selection from which to browse but the most important thing, that which will bring me back again and again, is the atmosphere created by the staff. The best shops are warm and welcoming without becoming oppressive. These are places where you can wander to your heart’s content, have questions answered thoughtfully and with kindness, and ultimately be left to browse and pet as you please.

This post, however, is not about one of those shops (although I will end with a shameless pitch for my absolute favorite yarn shop in Chicago); rather, this is about a shop to which I will never return and why.

There is one yarn shop in the city that I have found slightly off-putting but always came back to from time to time, until last Thursday. This particular shop is conveniently located, offers frequent sales, and, most importantly, is the only place within city limits (and accessible via public transportation, no less) that carries Fleece Artist, which I adore.

Now here comes the part where I would make Thumper sad. I have always tried to follow that childhood advice (“If you don’t have something nice to say . . . “) but here I think it worthwhile to examine the difference between shops to which I will joyfully return time and time again and those to which I will never come back.

This particular shop (and no, I won’t tell you its name) sent out an email last Thursday announcing a Mother’s Day sale where everything in the store was 25% off. I have been displeased there in the past but not so much as would turn me away from a quarter drop in the price of my beloved Fleece Artist.

On previous occasions I have found the staff there at best condescending and at worst overbearing. The women who work there have usually been perfectly nice but all seem to assume that every customer who walked in the door needed some hand-holding when choosing yarn and starting a project. I consider myself to be an accomplished knitter and a progressing spinner (accomplished will take a while yet) and do not walk into yarn stores to be coddled. It is just not my cup of tea. However, for Fleece Artist and a sale, I can put up with a bit of condescension.

Unfortunately, that was not what I got last Thursday. I had managed to catch a ride home that evening with my husband (I try to avoid the CTA at rush hour if at all possible) and off we went to the shop, visions of fiber braids dancing in my head. After making my selections (all in very predictable-for-me shades of green) we headed to the check-out counter. The woman at the register greeted us not with the kindness one usually expects at a yarn shop, or even politeness, but actually borderline rudeness. I had brushed this off as just a symptom of someone having a busy day – the shop had, after all, just sent out an email promising 25% off and it could not have been a quiet day. However, she then looked over my shoulder at my husband standing behind me, saw that he was male and thus presumably not a knitter (for the record, he is quite a proficient knitter and I proudly wear his works) and proceeded to ignore him for the rest of the transaction.

One of the most important things for me when I go to a yarn shop is how the employees treat my companions, who may or may not be knitters but who nevertheless have been known to return to a shop to secretly fetch some item over which I had fawned in their presence. At the very least, it seems good business sense to acknowledge the person who pulls out the credit card.

It was this disrespect for my husband, on top of less than stellar experiences in the past, that made Thursday evening the last time that I will ever set foot in that store.

And the funny thing about the whole experience was that on that very same day I had received an email letting me know that I had won two skeins of hand-dyed sock yarn from Creatively Dyed for commenting on her blog about all of the wonderful things about my absolute favorite yarn shop in Chicago: My Sister’s Knits.

Now for my shameless plug: My Sister’s Knits is just that sort of wonderfully welcoming shop that I mentioned at the beginning of the post. The owner is kind and gracious and a pleasure to know (plus she has a beautiful selection of yarns). And you know what? My husband likes it too!

Since one cannot have a blog post without at least a picture or two, here is what I picked up last Thursday.

I got this:



And two of these:



Which I pre-drafted into this:



In other news, the Baby Surprise Jacket is done!



(Yes, it still needs buttons)