Done

The Winter Apple baby set is done, and not before time. I spoke to the soon-to-be Mom on Christmas Day and she's feeling ready to go too, though she's not a knitter herself, and seemed slightly unsure that the bairn was in fact waiting for it's knitting to be done.


The sweater is adapted from F. Pea's Super Natural Stripes, the hat is my usual fruit shaped infant hat. Because I was working on this during late December I was a little concerned that it was looking too Christmasy, but I think it has all come together nicely. The green really is more of an apple green that a Christmas green and the little details are (I hope) cute without being twee.

Click for bigger

The Scotch Mist hat is also done. It's actually been done for a while but it took me a bit too long to get around to the washing and blocking. My photographer is at work today though, so only the 'hat-on-bowl' shot for now.


I still love this yarn, the Topsy Farms 2 ply I talked about here. It softened up some after a good Euculan soak but it's pretty rustic. I like that but I know some won't. The colour is great though and there is so much going on in it. In fact I have picked up a ball of the natural colour and started a cowl, of which more later.

The first of the Tesserae socks is done and yesterday I turned the heel on the second one. The feet go faster than the leg so these should be complete soon. This is going to be the last pair of light-weight socks I knit for a while though. The reality of winter is really setting in and thicker socks are required around here.

So done, done and nearly done. To be frank I'm feeling about done too. Work, the holidays, the weather and a nasty virus brought home by Himself have conspired to wear me down and make me thoughtful. I've been neglecting my blog for a while now and while there have been reasons big and small more than anything else I think I lost the groove of blogging and lost sight of why I started.

I'm going to take some time to make some changes around here. Partly just to freshen and tidy but also to figure out what it's going to take to get me to the keyboard more often. My big (non-knitting) project for the New Year is to finally get my studio/office set up. The room has been full of unpacked boxes and mess and finding anything (even a set of DPNs) has become a pain. Also with no bookshelves all of my books and patterns are packed away, not out to inspire me and with no desk I have been blogging from the dining room table. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to having my fiber space and I really do hope that it will give me a creativity kick-start for both writing and designing.

So I'll be quiet for a little while, though perhaps it won't be a noticeable difference from my spotty posts of late, and things may look a little messy around here but it'll get better. And I'll still be knitting, and will likely have stuff to show.


The cowl seems to be a big accessory this year - which from a knitters perspective is great, they're usually worked in the round, don't take much yarn and are over much sooner than a scarf. This is a cowl of necessity for me. Having been in a warmer climate for a few years I don't have a lot of hand knit scarves and none of those I do have has turned up here yet (I still don't have all of my stuff here). I have several of the enormous, woven euro-scarves that I always wore while living in France but every time I try to wear one here I feel rather self-conscious and affected. I am hoping this is going to be a good solution and finished before it gets ridiculous cold again (it has been both ridiculously cold and unseasonably warm in the past week).

Thank you all for visiting still, I hope that you'll bear with me. I wish everyone a joyous and knitty New Year.

Rockin

Despite the blog silence there has been a lot of knitting going on around here. Even though I'm not knitting for Xmas this year I'm still pushing to get things finished (mostly so I can start new things...you know).

I've been working away on this wee baby cardigan which is going quickly thanks to it's tiny size and clever top down raglan construction.


It's actually even further along that this now, but it was at this stage that daylight and my being at home actually came together for long enough to allow for photography. The bairn it is being knit for is due soon (and will, I suspect, be early) so this, and the little hat to go with it are a top priority.

The socks are coming along too. The pattern looks really complex but is really just a sort-of offset rib so as long as I can remember what row I'm on it's pretty simple and not as slow as i had feared. The first one is nearly to the toe and I'm hoping to make good progress on the second no with a few days off over the holidays.


In other sock news I've signed up for the Rockin Sock Club for 2009. I hummed and hawed about it for a while but Himself and I came to an agreement - he got a new PSP and I signed up for the Sock Club (and he gets at least one pair of the resultant socks). Marriage is all about compromise I'm told.

The paper whites also are making a sprint for the finish. After doing nothing at all for a couple of weeks they suddenly decided to go for height. Curious. There are a couple of little flower spikes on there though, so it looks like we should have a couple of blossoms in time for Christmas.

Happy Solstice Everyone!

NaKniSweMo Success

I feel a little sheepish for posting about it nearly a week after the fact, but I did indeed finish my NaKniSweMo sweater within the month of November. I had minutes to spare!

Klatchinan Cobbleston Complete

I am so happy with the way it turned out. The pattern is great, the yarn lovely and the knitting was very simple, yet with enough changes to hold the attention, it fits and he likes it. I think that's the making of a successful project, deadline or not.

This has really helped spark my interest in knitting larger things again. That and the fact that the temperature hasn't risen above freezing all week. We are entering that season in Canada where woolly things are not a matter of fashion, but of necessity. There will be more sweaters from me this winter for certain and I'm feeling excited about it.

I have, of course, cast on for a pair of socks for carrying-around knitting. I'm using Anne Hanson's Tesserae pattern and some Sisu in a gorgeous dark teal colour. It's a brilliant stitch pattern (so many of Anne's patterns grow out of these) and easily memorized but to get a nice looking result I've had to go down to a size 0 needle so these are going to take a bit of time. I'm also starting a baby item which will be the first of several in coming months as this whole baby things seems to be going 'round.

Though I'm not at all regretting my decision not to knit gifts for the holidays this year it feels somehow slightly wrong not to be frantically trying to finish things up now. So far, I'm coping.

For those wondering why Klatchian: I refer you to the works of one T. Pratchett, particularlyJingo.

Still November

Have I mentioned recently how much I love knitting sweaters in the round? I do and I'm especially glad that the Cobblestone sweater is worked this way. Once the body was complete to the underarms it didn't take long at all to knit the sleeves and by Friday afternoon I was ready to join them all together.


Which went fine, though those rounds right after joining are really long. Plus there are some short-rows in the back which are a great design detail but do mean that for a while you're doing a lot of knitting without gaining a lot of length. A chilly, quiet weekend meant lots of good knitting time and now I'm past the first set of decreases (hurrah!) and heading up towards the neck.

Sorry about the iffy photos, not much light here this month.

I'm not entirely confident that I'm going to make it by the end of November but I'm still going to try. Himself has been keeping a keen eye on my progress and we've certainly had sweater weather recently. Congrats to my fellow NaKniSweMo knitters who are already done!

Deadlines can be good motivators but I think I've had too much deadline knitting in the past few months so I've decided not to do any Christmas knitting this year. Not least because if I wanted to do my normal amount I would have needed to start weeks ago. Initially this decision made me a bit sad but I don't think it's worth making myself crazy, and I have distributed some yarny goodness throughout the year. Also there are a few wee bairns coming in the new year who surely will need some woolies.

Speaking of Christmas deadlines: Do you think my paper whites are going to make it?

Friday Yarn Pr0n (and more changes)

I am maybe a little bit obsessed with this yarn:


It's Topsy Wool from Topsy Farm on nearby Amherst Island. This is not what you'd call a highly processed yarn. The hand is a bit rough, there is the odd bit of twig.

Maybe it's some sort of genetic memory? It's practically begging to be made into something dense and durable, something more about survival than fashion. It's like wool from an earlier time.


NaKniSweMo progress took a bit of a hit this week but for a good cause: I started my new job. It all happened a bit fast and I'm still on a learning curve but I'm also very excited! Having interesting work with great people and tonnes of learning opportunities is such an energizing prospect.

The past two months seem to have flown by and there have been so many changes but things are really coming together and settling in. There's even time to slow down and toast achievements. Happy days.

Fall Back

I never meant to be one of those people who starts out all their blog posts apologizing for how long its been since the last blog post. Yet I find myself in that position again.

This last weekend when the clocks fell back Adam and I had a real sense that we were falling back into our real lives. The past six weeks have been insane and slightly blurred and very happy but we are glad that the pace is starting to slow again.


All of the wedding knitting did get done in time. Just. I was knitting the toe on the second of Adam's marryin' socks at 2:00 AM the morning of the ceremony and my Mom was weaving in the ends on my shawl hours before hand (Thanks Mom!). I won't say much about the wedding (which probably deserves it's own post once the photos come in) except that it was lovely and what we had hoped for.

And a slower pace should mean a bit more time for knitting and blogging. During the whirlwind of the wedding weekend my friend Lynn and I made a "blog more" pact and I know Lynn is not going to let me slack on this one. In case that wasn't enough incentive I've decided to do NaKniSweMo this year. I know, I know one would think that I would be running from even the idea of more deadline knitting at this point. But I've had a sweater for Adam in my Ravelry queue for months* and the yarn conveniently arrived while we were away. Also who can say no to Shannon?


I filled in that late-October gap (and quite a bit of travelling-back-from-the-Rockies time) with some mitten knitting. This looked smart when we returned to Kingston in the midst of a nasty snowstorm, but today as I'm finishing them off it's 15 C and sunny outside. I feel confident they'll be needed soon enough.


These are Elizabeth Zimmermann's mitered mitts, one of the May projects in the Knitter's Almanac and the yarn is Noro Kureyon in 149, which is the same yarn as the Noro Hat I knit back in February. The pattern is typical of EZ, really more of a suggested way of proceeding than a line by line pattern. I made long cuffs and trimmed them with garter and used the thumb trick rather than an afterthought thumb. I worked these on 3.75 mm needles so they're pretty dense, but I like a firmly knit mitten - keeps the wind out. The Knitter's Almanac is the smallest of EZ's books but it is a real treasure trove of patterns. It was published in 1974 and the photography could use updating but the meat of the book remains totally relevant, as a quick browsing of Ravelry projects from it reveals.

We still haven't completely unpacked from the move, nor have we opened most of our wedding gifts. But there will be time for those sorts of things...right now we are reveling in the decompression. I need to wash my kitchen floor. I need to get my hair cut. I need to find a new job. But I also need to knit, and to blog, and I will.


*I never really bought into the whole 'boyfriend sweater curse' thing, but surely now I have NO excuses.

Updates and Finished Objects

Update 1: Furniture. Yes our furniture and things finally arrived a little over a week ago. The whole experience ended up being an exercise in frustration and ridiculousness and an object lesson in why people hate to move. As much as I would like to go into detail the memory of it all is still too fresh (and there is a good chance that litigation is still to come) so it will have to wait for another day. Also it is so nice to be eating off a table sitting in a chair that it feels like tempting fate to grouse too much.

Update 2: Wedding Shawl. Still a lace blob, so I'll spare you the photos but well on the way to completion. Only ten rows of chart and four rows of edging to go (plus the bind-off, which I am refusing to contemplate for the moment, you all understand). Feeling good about this one (which is a good thing since we leave for out wedding in a shocking eight days.

Update 3: Non-knitting wedding stuff. Meh. A few people have asked why I haven't shared more of my wedding planning on the blog. My standard response is that it's meant to be a knitting blog. I read a lot of knitting blogs and it doesn't appeal to me when someones knitting blog morphs into a wedding blog or a pregnancy blog or whatever.

If I'm honest though it's more complex than that. This whole wedding planning thing just isn't fun. Or at least it isn't for me. I've seen the TV programs and the magazines and all these people who devote months and months of their lives to their weddings and I sort of assumed that at some point in the planning the magic Martha switch in my head would trip and that I too would become obsessively concerned with napkin rings and recessional music. Maybe I even wanted it too a little bit (I have this lingering feeling that I'm missing out on something) but it never happened.

This Saturday we engaged in a little wedding-related craftiness that had nothing at all to do with yarn.

not yarn

I can't even tell you how cool this was. We had booked months ago with Sarah at The Devil's Workshop to make our wedding bands. Ourselves. Neither of us has any experience with this sort of thing but the workshop was great and the whole process ended up being very profound.


It's not knitting, but finished objects none the less. I still can't believe we made them ourselves, the sense of satisfaction is great and I think Adam got a little peek into the whole DIY ethos. Rings are almost universally symbolic and wedding bands even more so. Spending a day together in the midst of all the craziness crafting the rings that we'll exchange on that day was time well spent.


And since I never know when enough is enough I'm knitting a pair of marryin' socks for himself. My very first visit to Wool Tyme here in Kingston yielded an absolutely perfect skein of Malabrigo (mmmmm) Sock. He's worth it.


For my fellow Canadians: Please vote today. Vote your conscience, vote strategically, vote however you'd like, but please vote. It really does matter.

Lace Blob and FO

We're slowly getting settled into our new place - at least as settled as people without furniture can be. Yup, more than two weeks after arriving we are still sleeping on the floor and getting increasingly frustrated with the moving company that told us five to ten days. However they say they're going to be here on Friday. Fingers crossed.

Knitting activity is also getting back to normal. I didn't even touch the wedding shawl for over a week while we were in the worst of the moving and traveling, it takes way more concentration than I possessed at that time. I've gotten back to it in the past week and yesterday it looked like this.


Not too different, I know. It really is bigger though and today I have moved on to chart B which promises a little more variety. The going is somewhat slow and the rows have passed the 300 stitch point but it's fun to work on and diverting as well, which is what I need right now.

I did manage to finish a pair of winter socks for Adam. These were my mindless project for the times when exhaustion and travel and craziness took over my brain. Worsted weight socks are a quick-knit anyway and while it isn't winter here yet, you can feel it coming.

Cable Twist Socks (Hello Yarn)
Patons Classic Merino Natural Mix
Raveled here

The pattern here is actually a mock-cable formed with slipped stitches. A little fussy to work but easier than breaking out the cable needle. Also a little less "lumpy" than a true cable, which is probably a good thing in a sock of this weight.

I'm feeling like a pretty negligent blogger lately, I must admit. Only two posts for all of September. I want to do better in October but I also have to leave for my wedding in less than three weeks, so I probably shouldn't be making any promises. I do hope that in the coming weeks I'll have time to tell you all more about our new home and our new town and all of the exciting things that are going on. I should also be getting reacquainted with my stash and my books and all the things that got packed away when I moved to France - which should provide plenty of ideas and posts and additions to the queue.

Autumn always feels like a time of beginnings to me and this one even more so. There should be plenty to write once there is time for writing.

Apologies.....

...for the long silence.

This move has been longer and more complex and far more tiring than we anticipated.

As of this morning we have the internets at home so a real post should be coming soon. Thanks for being patient.

secret no more.....

Shawl with no name

Lace in progress never looks very good. The wedding shawl is so far no exception.

It has actually grown a little bit since this photo but progress has slowed. Those short early rows inspire a false confidence. Now each row has well over a hundred stitches and takes 15 minutes to complete and of course the rows will only get longer. Happily this first motif is pretty intuitive and doesn't require constant attention to the chart.

Good progress is being made in other knitting. The secret thing is finished, but must remain secret for a little longer. The Captain Carrot scarf, which I put down at the start of the Ravelympics has been finished and washed and is now drying. Photos to come.

I scored a copy of the new Debbie Bliss magazine this week. If you're a fan of her style it's worth checking out. There are some really nice patterns and some other interesting content as well. Unfortunately the website seems to be down at the moment.

Blog posts here will likely be a little spotty for the next few weeks as I move and get settled in Kingston. But I'll update when I can and be back with much more sometime in late September.

VIP (very important pr0n)

So important that it is showing up a day late apparently. Oh well.

I dithered forever on what yarn to choose for my wedding shawl, considering a surprisingly wide variety of fibers and colours (I'm not wearing white, so I have options). Eventually I decided that it needed to be something classic and pretty but subtle.

Zephyr laceweight wool silk in Sable. It is exactly what I was hoping for. It is light but strong and soft with a subtle sheen. I'm still on the first pattern repeat but so far I'm pleased with how it's working up. This shawl probably won't be the biggest project I knit this year in either size or stitch count but it will certainly be the most significant, the most emotionally loaded. I want to enjoy the process as well as the result. Work in progress photos coming soon.

I was also lucky to receive a little gift from Stitches. Socks That Rock lightweight in the Knitter's Without Borders colourway.

Great yarn and a great cause - no way to go wrong there.

The only other thing I have on the needles is un-blogable since it's a gift for someone who reads here. Just a little stash-busting something, but it's fun to work on. Here's a sneak-peek.

Added to the list of things interfering with actual knitting this week is this book:

Lisa Lloyd's A Fine Fleece. This book has been out for a while and I hadn't really had a lot of interest in it. The theme of the book is knitting with handspun yarns and I don't spin. I can drop spindle a bit but I've long thought that I'd rather knit yarn that make yarn. However a thread in one of the Ravelry Cable Knitters forums led me to some project photos and I knew I had to get a look at this book.

Do I need to tell you that I wasn't disappointed? It's not that often that I get a book and really want to knit even a quarter of the projects in it. That's fine with me (truth told I've bought a whole book for one pattern at least once) since I know that tastes change and inspiration is valuable. A Fine Fleece? There are only a couple of patterns in there that I don't want to knit. In many cases immediately - I am only being saved by the crazy that is my life right now.

As has been mentioned once or twice before I am a big fan of texture work and the cabled patterns in this book are incredible. They vary from reasonably simple to extraordinarily intricate. Each project is shown in both handspun and a commercially spun yarn (nice for us non-spinners) and the photography and styling are lovely. It's not going to make me a spinner (though never say never) but I think at least one project from this book is going to be on my needles this winter.

Ravelympic Wrap-up

It was a close-run thing, but I made it.

Yarrow Ribbed Socks
from Knitting Vintage Socks
Berroco Alpaca Fine colours 1288 and 1285

So far 551 sock put participants have posted their finished items on Ravelry! And team Ankh-Morpork Knitters Guild came through with 40 finished objects, only slightly behind our arch-rivals over at team Hogwarts.

At the moment my primary feeling about these socks is relief that they're done. They still need a wash and patting out, but they look nice. I'm a little unsure about the toe, which Nancy Bush calls the French Toe. Instead of having two decrease points, with one at either side of the foot, it has three decrease points and sort of swirls up to the top. It was interesting to knit but I'm curious to see how it fits, both in shape and in length - the feet on these ended up being a bit shorter than most of Adam's socks. Alas it will be another three weeks or so before he can try them on.

Toe aside the pattern was clear and straight-forward if not especially interesting. It's a good boy-sock pattern though, and those aren't always easy to find. The yarn is nice and soft and fuzzy without being too fuzzy. It's also kind of splitty (not crazily so, but enough to make you pay attention) and very fine. I knit these on 2.25mm needles and probably could have gone tighter. The suggested needle size on the ball band is 3mm, which I am guessing is not a sock-based recommendation. Certainly at my tension a 3mm needle would have made for some very open results.

The socks are a mediumish Men's size and I have quite a bit of each colour left over. If I reversed the main and contrasting colours I think I could get another pair from the yarn easily, so it was a good value. It will be interesting to see how they wear and whether the Alpaca content makes them noticeably warmer than 100% wool.

No time to rest on my victory though, I'm hoping the yarn for my wedding shawl will arrive early this week and that will be a whole new saga, no doubt.

Nearly....

State of the Ravelympics socks:


Nearly to the toe on the second one. I think I'm going to make it.

State of The Moozer:


Clipped, clean and not at all "doggy". Will it last?

Isn't it Yarn Pr0n Friday?


Misti Alpaca Laceweight, bought at the Make One Studio in Calgary. They had a great selection of Misti Laceweight, but just this lone skein of black. I had to take it. Not sure what it wants to be yet, perhaps one of Anne's little nothings?

Photographing black yarn: Kind of vexing.

Ravelympics Update

With four days to go I am behind schedule again.


I can't believe that for the last Olympics I knit a sweater and this time I seem to be struggling to get through a pair of socks. I think it's back to late-night marathon knitting for me; maybe I still have a chance. At least I can multi-task and get caught up on podcasts.

Ravelry members can look here to see all the amazing people who have already crossed the Ravelympic finish line.

I have been busy, but not insanely so. I have time to knit but it seems that other things sneak in. With less than a month before we move there is always something that feels urgent. Normally I'd knit to take the edge off these times, but lately I've sometimes been too frazzled even for that. I'd best get back on track though because the yarn for my wedding shawl is on the way and reality is finally starting to sink in. I've got a lot on my plate.

With all this going on I'm not making it to any fiber festivals this summer. But my Mom, Lynne and her friend Linda are going to be at Stitches this weekend manning the Swallow Hill booth. If you're going please stop by and say Hi. And if you're not going to Stitches but need to flex your credit cards a bit anyway Tina at Blue Moon has posted her new colourways (whimper).

Wish me luck for the home stretch!

Friday Yarn Pron

Noro edition!

The hat I knit last winter in Noro Kureyon was a big success so I figured it would be worth stashing a few more balls of the same colourway. Mittens, I think. These two skeins (bottom) turned up at River City Yarns in Edmonton.


River City is such a great shop and has a great selection - a lot of the standards but some yarns that I've never seen in the flesh as well. The staff is great and friendly too. I wish this shop had been around when I lived in Edmonton back in the dark ages.

We spent a day in Calgary as well and stopped by the Make One studio, which I hadn't even seen since it's expansion. Amy wasn't around that day, alas but we had a nice chat with Sandra (Hi Sandra!) and couldn't resist adding this skein of Kureyon Sock (top) to the 149 collection.

That was actually the second skein of Kureyon Sock that I acquired on that trip; the first was gifted to me earlier in the week. Strangely I would never go and deliberately buy and wear crazily mis-matched purple stripy socks but I can't wait to knit this into some for myself. Yet another knitting mystery.

Kureyon Sock 188 Thanks Mom!

There is more vacation stash to be shared, but I think I'll spread it out a bit in hopes of actually getting back to regular Friday postings.

In Ravelympics news once I got settled with the new pattern my pace picked up nicely. Sock one is past the heel and if I can get it done before Monday I think I still have a chance to finish the pair on time.


So far this is the most accurate shot of the colours in this sock - it's vexingly difficult to photograph. It's going to be a busy few days with friends visiting from out of town and lots of planning for the move but if there is knitting time to be found I will find it.

Hindsight is 20/20

I suffered an early setback in the Ravelympics on day two when I had to frog all work completed to that point and start again. With a different pattern.

The pattern I started of with had a sweet little twisted stitch cable detail. Fun to work and (in theory) a nice non-fussy accent for a boy sock. It was all printed off and laid out with the yarn ready to go on Friday. Unfortunately it soon became clear that this yarn and this pattern were not meant to be together.

The Alpaca Fine is soft and lovely to be sure, but it is soft and lovely because it is somewhat loosely spun and has a very slight halo. And the main colour for this project, Blueberry, is also lovely but is a dark, light-sucking blue. The result, completely unsurprisingly to everyone with an ounce of sense (but not me), is that the sweet little twisted stitch detail was lost completely and the rest of the sock was looking a little floppy.

I slept on it Friday night (not literally because: pointy!) and in the light of the morning knew I had to rip. Fortunately I was only a few inches in. Needing a new pattern quickly I did what I should have done in the first place (ah, hindsight) and dug out my Nancy Bush books and choose a nice simple-but-interesting ribbed pattern. A solid weekend of knitting and I'm back on track.


Since speed is of the essence I've gone back to aluminium needles for these socks. I actually started the ill-fated pattern on some Inox double points I picked up last month. The Inoxes are steel, which is wonderfully smooth and pointy but (since the laws of physics apparently still apply) WAY heavier that aluminium. They'd be manageable for a nice hard spun wool being worked tightly but they just weren't playing well with this yarn and I feared that I would be courting hand pain with the marathon sessions the Ravelympics demand.

So far today real life has interfered cruelly with knitting time, but I think that if I can finish the leg and knit the heel flap by Wednesday morning I might be able to have sock 1 done by the end of the week. Knit knit knit.

Changes

With only a couple of hours to go before the Ravelympics I have yarn but have not yet decided on a pattern. I spent a couple of hours last night leafing through New Pathways For Sock Knitters - and while it is a fascinating book and there are some patterns I am eager to try, I'm not too sure that completely rethinking the way I knit socks is something I should undertake just now.

The fact that it has taken me this long to get around to even reading this book says a lot. I received it for my last birthday (which is in November, for those who do not feel the need to check up on my Ravelry profile) but promised myself I wouldn't get 'too involved' with it until I finished my Christmas knitting. I finished my Christmas knitting Christmas morning (shocking, I know) and 24 hours after that found myself happily, if unexpectedly, engaged. That rather took over for a few days and a month later I moved to France and Cat's book was packed away in a box, not revisited till this week. Which is a shame, really, because I so want to knit through a few patterns in this book and understand what's going on but I fear it's still going to be a few months before I can really get stuck into it. Sorry Cat, your brilliant mad knowledge will have to be theory-only to me for a while more.

The yarn for this project, picked out by Adam before he headed back to France is new to me (clearly there have been interesting yarny developments in my absence). Berroco Alpaca Fine sock yarn. There's a good bit of wool in there too, as well as some reinforcement which I'm hoping will give it some spring. I'm looking forward to trying it though and think these should be some nice, soft and very warm socks. The lovely yarn is seen here reposing on my lovely new bag. It was a bit of a splurge, but I treated myself to a Namaste Knitting Messenger. Now that I'm knitting some larger projects again, I need a larger bag sometimes and this one has capacity. I think that it will hold a decent sized piece of knitting AND my laptop and camera if necessary. It's like a mobile blogging unit!


And warm socks will soon be needed, because by this winter we will be living in Kingston, Ontario. I don't know much about Kingston, but I do know that they have real Canadian winters there. After several years of living in milder climes it's going to be nice to have a reason to break out the heavy artillery (wool-wise anyway). Also it is close(r) to Rhinebeck, as Adam likes to point out (I think I've mentioned before, this guy knows his audience).

I won't be going to Rhinebeck this year though because I'm getting married that week. I know, I know this is like an NFL nut getting married on Super Bowl weekend. We needed to set a date pretty quickly after we got engaged and I was clearly slightly stunned and not processing information at full speed. Strange but true: in those few days wool was not the foremost thing on my mind. I've since recovered, clearly.

Here are some snaps from our vacation in July, click on the top pic to flip to the next one. Stash enhancement still to come!

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Knit On

Only three posts for July - not good. Fortunately August should be more prolific, in both knitting and blogging.

The knitting will be driven, in part, by the Ravelympics. I'm not so much feeling the actual Olympic spirit this year, but I'm always up for a knitting event. I participated in Stephanie's Knitting Olympics in 2006, knitting (and completing) my Ribby Cardi in the specified period. Since I have a few more things on my plate this year I'm being a little less ambitious and have signed up for the Sock Putt. Haven't decided on a specific project yet, I'm hoping that a trip to my old LYS this week will clear things up.

I'm knitting for Team Anhk-Morpork Knitter's Guild.

Also likely to be keeping the needles moving in August is the premiere issue of Knotions, which goes live on the fourth. Knotions promises to be a different kind of knitting magazine and their commitment to fair treatment for designers should start important conversations within the industry.

Posting should be getting more regular very soon. In the meantime here's a vacations snapshot sneakpeak of the second slurm sock visiting Pyramid Lake in Jasper National Park.

Good News Everyone.....

We're back! Not back in France, but back on Vancouver Island visiting my parents and back to a good high-speed connection and being in the same place for more than 12 hours at a time.

I think this July is turning out to be a bit of a lost month. I've had so much to do and so many demands on my time that the days seems to have passed incredibly quickly. It's mostly been a lot of fun, but I haven't had a lot of time for regularly scheduled activities like knitting.

I let my blogiversary go by un-noted this month. I didn't intend to, I remembered on the day and everything. It's just that I spent most of the day driving from Lilooet to Squamish and finding enough wireless to blog would have meant fighting it out with the beautiful people in Whistler. Meh.


The slurm socks did get finished, proving yet again that doing a round or two here or there really does add up to a finished sock. The pattern (Charade by Sandra Park) is wonderfully hypnotic and has no purling at all in the leg and foot. I think it could translate to a good boy sock as well. I don't think I need to say anything about the yarn (Socks That Rock lightweight) except that it remains my favorite sock yarn ever. This was my first time working with one of the nearly solid colourways and I can't wait to use another one. For the record, the colour is a little closer to true in the first photo (the second was taken at twilight in shade).


The Captain Carrot scarf has also grown some - though it turns out fingering weight scarves don't go quite as quickly as one might hope. It is pleasingly mindless though and as such is good tv/car knitting. I'm only about halfway through the first 100g skein of this yarn (I have three) and I'm thinking that unless himself wants a really long scarf one skein is going to do it. I may save the other two skeins and see what sort of gauge I can get holding it doubled - perhaps a matching hat someday?


Someday is a word we're using a lot lately. That and 'after October'. Our wedding is now less than 100 days away (ack!) and we've got quite a lot of excitement coming up even before then. I can't spill all quite yet, but it's going to be a crazy few months here at chez consolations, it's all to the good though.

Next time I should have some holiday snaps as well as some new stash to flash. It's good to be back.