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.

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.

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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Merci bien

Careful readers will note that there has been a lot of fruitless waiting around here lately. Which made this little bit of mail an even more welcome surprise:


A care package from our friends John and Melissa back in Canada. I'll be teaching Melissa to knit this summer (see Mel, it's on the internet, it must be true) and clearly her taste in books is already excellent. I've been coveting this one for a while. And certainly young L. is showing a prodigal mastery of both the watercolour and pen and ink forms.

Thank you guys, so much. We miss you.

Skill Set

So I've been busy. Nothing new there - everyone's busy all the time and summer is flying by. Not much knitting progress to show this week, though the first mercury twist sock is past the heel and headed for the toe decreases.Still grey, still not much to look at. Alas. I've been swatching and planning and spending way too much time on Ravelry, all of which are knitting activities and therefor count as knitting time. So while there has been lots of knitting time, there hasn't been all that much knitting. The hazards of the modern times I suppose.

This evidence of limited progress combined with my moaning to Adam about how long it's been since I've had time to read a book just for pleasure got me to thinking a bit about time and how it's spent. Knitting, together with the previously mentioned knitting related activities take up large chunks of my free time and I'm fine with that. It seems ridiculous to complain about not having time to read, when the real issue is clearly one of priority.

Or perhaps multi-tasking? I admit that I have always been envious of people who can knit and read at the same time. I tried once or twice back in University days to combine these favorite activities but never got the hang of it. I think it's time for another attempt.

Choice of project is clearly important here. I'm fairly sure that the reading is going to require the greater part of my attention so the knitting must be something that can take place on auto-pilot. Stockinette in the round seems like a good place to start and something without shaping to keep track of. A bag! A felted bag, since felting will conceal many errors and variances in gauge I had some highly feltable SWS in the stash and a trip to the LYS to pick up another skein revealed that this yummy yarn now comes in solids as well.


Nothing says summer like soy wool and theoretical physics. Let the experiment begin.

What I Bought on my Summer Vacation

In which I am a model of self-control and restraint.

When I lived in Edmonton it was pretty under served in the yarn shop department. That was before the recent knitting boom, of course and I had heard that the situation had improved somewhat. Time constraints and the realisation that Adam's yarn shop tolerance, while good, should only be pressed so far, meant that I only hit two shops in town. The expedition was a success.

My favorite shop was River City Yarns. This shop was profiled in VK a while back and had a lot of buzz so I was looking forward to checking it out in person. It did not disappoint. They had Socks That Rock! One skein of the lightweight had made its way into my stash earlier in the summer, but I had never seen a selection of colours and weights in person. Wow. There were easily 5 or 6 skeins in colourways so lovely I was tempted to own them as art.

I managed to keep one foot in the real world and remind myself that I often don't like socks knit with wildly colourful variegated yarns, no matter how pretty they may be in the hank. The skein you see is Midweight in the Beryl colourway, which is one of their shaded solids. Adam picked it out for his next pair. What can I tell you - the boy has taste.

This shop also had a great notions selection (I do love notions). I had been looking for a Norwegian Knitters Thimble for ages and was pleased to find one. I'd never seen the Phildar DPNs before, but I'm always on the lookout for good ones, so I'll give them a try. Difficult to see in the photo (glare, sorry) is a little bag of coil-less safety pins. I remembered Elizabeth Zimmermann's admonition in Knitting Without Tears that one should always take a card of these when you see them. Who am I to argue?

The Rowan Felted Tweed came from Wool Revival, a shop which has existed in various versions for a long time. It is very much an old school yarn shop. Bags and baskets of yarn spilling all over and not too much rhyme or reason. Some nice yarns but mostly stuff I can get easily enough at home. I liked these colours of the felted tweed together though - I'm thinking maybe Nucks. I was very happy to find a copy of Knitting on the Road there.
The Travelling Knitter will be an accurate description of me for the next 16 months or so. And I can never resist a Nancy Bush pattern. Itty-bitty hats was also a vacation purchase. Lots of gift ideas in that one.

That's it. I was even able to zip my luggage on the way home. Yarn is the best sort of souvenir don't you think?

And for next time....does anyone know if there's a yarn store in Jasper?