Socks, Baby.

So last weekend was Sock Summit which by all reports was crazy and overwhelming and wonderful. I wasn't there. Sort of disappointing but realistically it was just too far to go. Of course had the summit taken place at this time last year I would have been a few hours away by car. Alas.

I did think of Tina and the Blue Moon ladies though while working on my socks. Blue Moon Socks that Rock (lightweight) in Garden Daze:


This was the yarn for the July shipment of the Rockin' Sock Club. It is very, very far outside of my usual colour family but I liked it as soon as I opened up the package. So far I have been letting my sock club yarn mellow in stash a bit, in fact a few earlier shipments have not yet been cast on. Not so this, I cast on a couple of days after it showed up. Unfortunately the club pattern and I were not seeing eye to eye. It's a lovely pattern, but I thought it obscured the colours and I was getting some unfortunate pooling. Sometimes a really pretty handpaint just want to be a plain vanilla sock. So it is (with a little picot cuff thrown in for variation). I am zooming through these, not least because I can't wait to wear them no doubt alarming my friends and co-workers.

Another reason it is probably best I did not make it to Sock Summit: I would almost certainly have bought sock yarn and I don't really need more sock yarn. Being in the sock club fills the hand-painted niche very nicely so I've bought some solid colours lately but not much else.

Working in a yarn shop is not without its hazards and going home with more yarn than pay is one of them. Now that I've been there for a while though the effect has changed. I'm at the yarn store all the time. I'm surrounded by the lovely yarn all the time. The yarn fumes have lost some of their power perhaps but mostly I have gotten over that feeling that "If I don't buy it right mow I might never see this yarn again" feeling. The yarn is always there and even if a particular yarn or colour goes away more yarn will come to fill its place.

All very nice and philosophical sounding. We'll see how well this has held up in October, after Rhinebeck.

Socks aside it's been all gift knitting lately. Which of course does not make for good blogging, as some of the recipients read here from time to time. The gift of the moment should be safe; another apple hat for another anticipated baby.

Adam is flying west this weekend for work and hopes to have a chance to visit friends who have just announced they are expecting their first in February. One apple hat coming up. Cast on at Pub knitting on Wednesday and should be done this afternoon (I need to burrow into the stash to find a few yards of brown for the stem).

Blogger tells me that this is the 100th post since I started this blog a little over two years ago, which doesn't sound like a very good pace. Just have to keep going, I guess.

Back To It

Things are still looking a little messy here at consolations, but it's time to get back to it I think. As well as spiffing up the blog there has been knitting going on.

I finished off Adam's latest pair of socks last week. They actually worked up more quickly than I anticipated, what with the legs being knit on 2.0 mm needles. But ultimately they didn't take any longer than other textured patterns. I really like the pattern, and I'm looking forward to working more of Anne's patterns very soon.

Tears of Offler socks
raveled here

At the same time that I've been refreshing the blog , I've been weeding through my Ravelry queue with a firm hand. Both taste and circumstance change and I had to come to grips with the fact that there were items on there which, no matter how lovely, were never going to be knit by me. Some things stand the test of queue time and I have cast on for the vest which had been sitting in the number one spot for some time. No photos yet, as there isn't much to show, but I'm glad to be working on a garment again.

Also waiting for a photo session is the Thermis cowl. It is done and since this shot has even had its buttons sewn on. A very enjoyable knit as well as a timely finished object, since we are in the midst of a deep freeze here in Ontario at the moment. However it is possible that I am not as elegantly long-necked as some; when I wear this it comes up around the bottom of my ears. I like it though, and can see knitting more of these, even if only as gifts.


Speaking of gifts, the Winter Apple baby did indeed arrive shortly after the knitting was complete and is a little boy. I'm sure he'll be sweet in his little apple hat.

Most of the knitting this month seems destined to be foot coverings for the men in my life. I've just finished a pair of boot socks for my Dad (sorry, no photos till they're in the mail) and cast on a pair for my husband. These heavy-weight socks do go quickly, which is a nice change. Another, more secret, project needs to be done by the end of the month as well.

It was nice to have a bit of a break from regular blogging, but it will be good to get back to it as well. I am hoping to post at least twice a week, but I won't make any promises just yet. There have been so many changes in the last four months and I'm not all that resilient to changes. But things seem to be leveling out (knock wood) and calming down and the pace of things is becoming familiar. I just need to figure out what to slot back into the schedule and what might be better left out. I probably won't get this right on the first try, but I'm working on it.

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.

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.

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!

The Knitter Alone

Himself has gone off to Britain for a few days, and though disappointed not to be accompanying him, I'm coping with my usual aplomb.


I cannot stop knitting these socks! Sometimes one yarn and one pattern converge into something truly wonderful.

If you haven't already, please take the time to read (and consider) Franklin's post from Tuesday. It is moving and important and there is nothing I can possibly add.

Don't Panic!

It's International Towel Day!

Do you know where your towel is?









Douglas Adams 1952-2001

Hurry up and...

Wait.

It seems like waiting is going to be the theme of the week. Waiting for news, waiting for needles, waiting for yarn. In knitting, as in life, needing something additional before I can move forward. I've got a plan, but the fates might have plans too.

What do we do while we wait? We knit, of course (it helps keep the panic down).


I can still count to four. I can still make a sock. There is some peace in that.

Queue up

Despite my continued efforts to trim it, my Ravelry queue seems to be settled at around 30 projects. I've tried to be ruthless and deleted projects that were unlikely or too similar to others (how many cabled, hooded cardigans am I really likely to knit?) but I've just added others. I'm not sure why this troubles me.

There are ten sock patterns in my queue - my hope is that sock patterns, like sock yarn, don't really count. More curiously there are three vest patterns. I cannot recall the last time I wore a vest and am not even sure I'm a vest person. Apparently I aspire to be. There are four cardigans, but I already know that I'm a cardigan person. And though there has been a dearth of serious lace knitting lately there are still quite a few such projects on the list.

So much knitting, so little time. Is this what Jenny and Nicole mean when they talk about the knitting fantasy life? At least the queue also contains some accessory (read small) projects that may find their way onto the needles in the coming months.

The real bad news? My next two large projects, the ones that must both be done for the beginning of July....I never bothered to queue the pattern for either of them.

Still here...

But without much to show. The sweater that I keep threatening is still waiting to be cast on. It's not that I lack enthusiasm for the project, though I am still a little suspicious about that gauge, but I just couldn't sit down and get started. The yarn, though lovely, wasn't calling to me.

It eventually came to me: I felt guilty. Buying the yarn for the sweater, even though it was on sale and not all that spendy, was a splurge for me. The Canadian dollar has plunged like a stone against the Euro in the past little while and living in Europe is expensive. Plus I'm not working, so the balance is only going in one direction.

This realisation really surprised me. I'm not at all an extravagant person, but I've never really felt guilty for buying yarn before (even when perhaps I ought to have). I've always been able to argue that yarn (okay and books) are my only indulgence. I'm fortunate to have a wonderful partner who has not only never denied me yarn but often enabled me in its purchase. And none of this has changed, not really. I was able to afford the yarn that I bought, without much of a pinch. Would I feel differently if the finished object were to be for someone other than myself?

So I will, in the next few days, release my lingering doubts and cast on the sweater. We're leaving on a little holiday next week and the miles of stockinette should fit the bill nicely. I have a hat to finish up (surely this will be the last hat of the winter) and then I can begin a pair of travelling socks as well. I haven't had a sock on the needles since I finished the birthstones, I think I needed to catch my breath after that marathon of lace.

Speaking of which, here's a better fo shot of the amethyst lovelies before they hit the post. My feet aren't quite the same size as the recipient, but you get the idea.


Looking over my Ravelry queue today (no shortage of sock patterns there, let me tell you) made me think that I really need to make some sort of a knitting plan for the rest of the year. It promises to be an incredibly busy and not stress-free 9 months. I will need some knitting to see me through.

Leap!

So I was entering the birthstone socks on my Ravelry last night and having a look at my projects. There's not one sweater on that list. I never went back and entered all of my older projects on Ravelry, many of them had long since been gifted away and a few I'm not so proud of now and I didn't blog back then so hauling things out and photographing them was more than I was willing to take on. So most of the items on my project page are things I've knit in the last year or so. A lot of socks, of course, a couple of scarves and (after the Christmas knitting) quite a number of hats. No sweaters. Rarer even than leap years.

Speaking of the birthstone socks, they're ticking along nicely. Also why don't I work in twisted rib more often? I'm enjoying the pattern, the lace is simple but pleasingly engaging. Yummy yarn too.


But back to the sweaters (or lack thereof). I have knit sweaters. Quite a few in fact, though some more successful than others. As near as I can recall the last sweater I knit was the Christmas before last - a top-down raglan for my Dad. My Dad is a fairly big guy and likes his sweaters very plain, so I can see how it might have taken it out of me for a while, but over a year? I certainly didn't make a conscious decision not to knit sweaters. Maybe I just didn't feel I had the time to take on a big project, or maybe it seems like a lot of yarn to buy at once.

When I went through the stash before storing it away I noted that I didn't have a sweaters worth of anything, but I certainly have lots of sweater patterns. Patterns that I have intended to knit. My Ravelry queue has several sweaters.

I need to get back to knitting sweaters and there are currently several good reasons why I should. My brother is getting married this summer and Adam and I will be in Canada for his wedding. I'd love to make a nice little summer sweater to wear to some of the family functions. Summer sweaters are small, maybe that's a good place to start. Also I'm engaged now, and it's time I knit Adam a sweater.

So I'm doing preliminary reconnaissance. Looking at patterns, plotting whether it is better to try and find yarn here or order from overseas. Easing into it.

Nothings going to happen too quickly though, because at the moment I am completely obsessed with Norwegian Snails. These ones:

click for big

Yeah, I can't explain it either.

Reckoning

I spent an evening this week going through my stash. It had to be done. What do I take with me to France, what goes into storage until we have a longer-term place to live and what gets de-stashed. It was hard.

We knitters do get a little odd about our stashes, don't we? At the end of the day it's just yarn, but in reality there seems to be a lot more caught up in the strands. After much sorting and re-sorting and gnashing of teeth I had a big box of purged yarn and 6 bins for storage. And that's all of it. Every back of the closet, stuffed in a drawer, trunk of the car (ahem) meter of yarn is accounted for.

Some surprises:

• Most of the purged yarn was easy to part with (what was I thinking of when I bought the pastel mint green scary shiny baby yarn). Some of it will find a better home with other fiber artists, some will likely end up in the thrift shop. Overcoming that mental barrier that says "you can't get rid of that, it's yarn" needs be done only once. After that it hardly hurts at all.
• I don't have a sweaters worth of anything. A lot of the stash is comprised of leftovers and "one off" skeins. I'm okay with that. I've been knitting lots of small things lately, so these quantities do get used up.
• I do have a couple of shawls worth. Thought I knit less of it last year, I am surely a lace junkie. And apparently I can buy yarn for lace a little more impetuously and tuck it away out of sight. Of course this is in no small part because a shawls worth of yarn is a lot more compact than a sweaters worth of yarn (even if similar in yardage). Also I can guesstimate and buy a shawl yarn I lust after without having a pattern in mind, I would be much less likely to do that with a sweater.
• I very little cotton. And if you subtract dishcloth cotton I have almost none. I should probably either come to terms with cotton or give up on it entirely. This should be a post in itself.

Less surprising (Zimmermaniac that I am) is that I have quite a bit of good, plain, solid wool. And there is some sock yarn. Fortunately sock yarn doesn't count.

So it's tidied and sorted and packed away. There's only one way to celebrate this sort of thing.... Buy yarn!


I know, clearly I'm past help. None of this is going into the bins though. That sock yarn on the left is for a pair of mindless striping socks for me. I suspect with all the chaos in the next few weeks I'll need a project like this. The lovely green on the right is Cascade 220 and is going to be cast on very soon. It's become colder here, will be colder still in the alps and I've been saying I need a hat for a while. That green is a reminder that spring will come.

The tweedy brown is Elsebeth Lavold Silk Wool, surely one of my top ten yarns. That one's going to France. Another hat, I think, something lighter for when the days begin to warm. Mostly (and irrationally, I know) I just want a skein to take with me.

The alpine booties are nearly ready for felting. There is a mistake in one of the heels (3 am knitting again) but nothing that will be noticeable once they're done.


Should be the first FO of 2008.

What gets knitted in

Knitting is nearly always more than the stitches formed when needle meets wool. The knitted object, especially when gifted, also represents our time and our affection for the recipient. The wavy and woolly scarf was a particularly loaded knit.

It was birthday gift for Adam, begun much too late for the actual day, but in what I thought was lots of time before I would see him in September. Adam and I have spent most of the last nine months apart, which does leave me with some extra knitting time but is mostly very hard.

This scarf came to be my late night project. Something I could pick up at the end of my day and work on while listening to the radio. Something to quiet my brain. The late-at-night hours are sometimes hard ones. Days are full and rushed but when it is late it is quiet and there are few distractions and your mind can wander to missing someone. A lot. And I thought and I worried and I missed. I worked on it when I was exhausted and sad. All that went into that scarf. It absorbed a few tears as well.

I'm sure this late-at-night knitting for absent loved ones is as old as knitting . Because the act itself is soothing and a camouflage for day-dreaming and wishing. And hours knit away are hours of separation that are past forever. And when someone wears the knitting then they will know that you missed them. They will be warmer and somehow safer for your efforts. This knitted thing becomes more than the sum of its parts; what happens when needles meet wool.

Or so I hope. Maybe I'm just a knitting romantic. Either way, there is bound to be more late-at-night knitting, but that's okay. There is strength in it.