Cottage46 Knitter

Knitting Productivity

Sorry for the long blog delay.  Fall was super busy with indexing.

I worked a lot on finishing the front of Irish Moss.  It looks fabulous.  Unfortunately I never went up to the proper needle size after knitting the ribbing.  I can write about it calmly now, but I wasn't so calm when I realized it.  So Irish Moss is in a time out while I decide whether to frog it or lose 20 lbs. 

So then I needed a quick win to re-establish my knitterly mojo.  Hence, ChicKnits Mondo Cable Pulli.  Knit it up in a week.

We've had a little warm spell so I haven't had a chance to wear it yet.  Hopefully next week.  Details on Ravelry. 

Next up is another ChicKnits pattern, Cassidy.  Very enjoyable knit.  Just enough cabling to keep it from being stockinette.

It's Cascade 220 in a really pretty colorway.  Blue with some purple and teal mixed in. 

Am Kamin

Happy 10/10/10!

 

So I got some wonderful Hebridean 3-ply last month in Limpet, Selkie and Capercaillie.  But instead of using it for my next project, I'm using some Cascade 220 from stash.  Oh well... Yarn knows what it wants to be and what it doesn't want to be. 

I've wanted to knit Am Kamin for a while but didn't feel like tackling the Japanese pattern.  Turns out it's not that hard.  I love that the whole pattern is charts and schematics, and once you learn a couple Japanese symbols (like for stitches and rows) it all starts to make some sense.

 

The red is actually a bit darker.  It's not going to be a quick knit, but it'll be worth it.

My easy project at the moment is an Eyelet Cardi for my mom in Knit Picks Cotlin. 

 

I think this is my 3rd Eyelet cardi; I love the pattern.  I have 3 more Chic Knits patterns that I've picked up lately.  They're always well thought out and well written.

Sadly I still have the same socks on the needles as I did the last time I posted.  I really need to finish some WIPs. 

Gotta go, we're getting ready to go to a Haven Kimmel reading/talk.  She wrote A Girl Named Zippy and She Got Up Off the Couch, both of which were incredibly funny and entertaining.  She's from tiny Mooreland, Indiana, which is a lot like tiny Howe, Indiana, where I grew up.  My mom and dad stopped in Mooreland last year on their way to Florida and Mom had her picture taken in front of the Friends meetinghouse where Zippy/Haven went to church.  Needless to say, we couldn't let a local appearance go by without seeing her! 

BTW, it is currently 83 degrees in mid-October. What the heck? 

 

 

Socks and Swatches

Fall must be coming because I want to knit all. the. time.  I finished what may be my favorite pair of sock evah.  (Give me a minute while I figure out how to get a picture out of Flickr PITA redesigned page.  Gah.)  (OK, now that I've found it, it may be an improvement.  Still, give a girl a little warning.)

The pattern is Aragorn and the yarn is Cascade Heritage.  One pair done, another pair started:

Marlene in Colinette Jitterbug.  

I've been working a little on my swatches for the Master Knitter level 2.  These are practice swatches, especially since I did the lace swatches in worsted instead of fingering.  Sometimes skimming directions just isn't enough.  I should know that by now.  This level won't be done any time soon.  There's an argyle sock which I'm sure I'll procrastinate on.  And I've never done intarsia so I'll have to practice.  There's a vest that can be done from a pattern or designed.  It seems like designing would be good practice for designing a sweater in level 3.  That won't go quickly.

I spent part of last weekend organizing stash.  That was fun.  I was happy to find a little leftover Cotton Fleece that I used for my Cable and O's cardigan.  After I finished it, I decided the button band had too many stitches.  For reasons I don't remember, I bought a couple skeins from a Raveler to use for the new button band. 

This won't surprise anyone, but it wasn't the same dye lot.  Visibly not the same dye lot.  So I've been debating what to do about it.  I thought I had saved the yarn from the original band, but couldn't find it.  Well I found it last weekend so I'll soon be doing Cable and O's 3rd (and hopefully final) button band.  It's interesting how much heavier that Cotton Fleece (cotton/wool) sweater is compared to a similar sweater in Cotton Ease (cotton/acrylic).

The neglected garden seems to be getting its revenge.  We have tons of tomatoes on the plants, but only the grape tomatoes have turned red.  Do they realize it's the first week of August?

Knitting and spinning furiously

Coming up for air!  My current indexing project has schedule slippage and I'm making effective use of the time to knit and spin like a crazy woman.  I actually had to dust off Eleanor yesterday to spin on her.  I thought I might be rusty, but it's just like knitting and felt totally familiar.

I finished my first pair of Wollmeise socks.  It's the Cookie A mystery sock from the Sock Knitters Anonymous group.  I've never done a mystery sock, but I figured I couldn't go wrong with a Cookie A pattern.  They fit perfectly. 

I'm FINALLY knitting a project with handspun.  And it's a lace shawl.  Both firsts for me!  The fiber was an inexpensive wool that I bought when I took my spinning class last year.  It's a bit scratchy but I think it will work for a shawl.  It's about a sport or dk weight and the pattern is Traveling Woman.  I hope I have enough yarn.  You'll hear the weeping and gnashing of teeth if I don't. 

This is what the singles looked like.  They seemed so thin when I spun them but I ended up with a heavier yarn than I expected.   I can't image ever getting a 3-ply fingering weight.  Must practice more!

Kiki has been a sick kitty, but she seems to be on the mend.  She had been losing weight for no apparent reason so she's just finishing a round of antibiotics and steroids.  She's been ravenously scarfing down whatever we feed her and she's definitely gaining weight.  We'll take her to the vet for another round of blood tests next week, but she seems better.  Although that may not seem obvious from her facial expression here.

Despite our complete neglect of the garden, we will have bumper crop of tomatoes and zucchini.  Well, not complete neglect.  We managed to get the tomatoes staked up last week.  (Yes, I am aware that it is the middle of July.) The green beans and broccoli have been decimated by the bunnies though.  This alters how I feel about the bunnies and the bunnies would be smart to keep that in mind. 

Busy busy spring!

My little indexing business is usually pretty slow in the spring and summer, but not this year.  That and planning/hosting a conference at work and the usually spring yard and garden work are my excuses for not blogging since... April 13th.  Sheesh.

I've been knitting, but not a whole lot.  I finished a Tulip sweater out of Knit Picks CotLin for a little friend in Louisiana.  So adorable! 

I always have liked how applied i-cord edging looks, but I'd never done it before this sweater.  Not as annoying as I thought it might be to knit, but then again, it's a toddler sized sweater.  The Cotlin is so far so good.  I started an Eyelet Cardi for my mom in it.  It seems to wear well. 

I've been working on socks sporadically.  I'm working on Cookie A's mystery socks with the Sock Knitters Anonymous group on Rav.  I'm using Wollmeise and the it's perfect for the pattern.  The finished one fits perfectly. 

This summer has been hot, muggy and buggy so far; a trifecta of things I hate.  Clearly the garden hasn't been getting much attention.  I have most of it planted at least, although I do have a few more tomato plants to get in and another row of green beans to plant.  It's cooler today and tomorrow so I think I'll get up early tomorrow and at least do a little weeding. 

I'm doing this post on my new laptop!  I got a Sony Vaio a couple weeks ago.  So nice to have 500 Gb instead of 65 Gb.  No more deleting podcasts I haven't listened to because I need the hard drive space.  Also nice to have more than one program going at once without major slowdowns. 

Must get back to work!  I have 2 indexes going at the moment, one of which is over 1200 pages.  (The book, not the index.)  ;o)

All socks, all the time. Almost.

Knitting monogamy has been completely tossed aside.  As we all knew it would be.  At the moment I'm deeply into socks with twisted and traveling stitches.  So tiny, so delicate. 

Window Pane socks in Dream in Color Smooshy, colorway Pansy Go Lightly (could there be a better name?)

Aragorn in Cascade Heritage which may be my new favorite sock yarn.

Ellington in Wollmeise 80/20 Twin, colorway Ballerina.  It's the first time I've knit with WM and I liked it. 

I seem to have a lot of new sock yarn and sock patterns so there are a lot of single socks hanging around waiting for mates.  So not only have I thrown monogamy overboard, I'm knitting socks willy nilly without finishing pairs.  As DH always says, "If you're going to step over the line, step all the way over the line."

I'm also working on a Tulip sweater for a lovely little toddler who has declared the last sweater I made for her as her favorite.  Smart girl, that one.  I'm using Knit Picks Cotlin.  I'm usually disappointed with their yarn in spite of my deep and abiding love for their needles, but this yarn has potential.  We'll see how it looks after blocking. 

I'm off to cast on another sock!

What happened to February?

Considering I actually pay Typepad for this blog, I REALLY should post at least monthly.  But February is short; if it were normal length it would still be Feb.  Ha!  How's that for rationalization?

Progress is continuing very slowly on Ingeborg.  The sleeves are done.

And there's a bit of progress on the body.

I've been moderately monogamous.  I've worked on socks but no other large projects.  My left hand isn't used to participating in my knitting so it gets tired quickly when I'm doing stranded knitting. 

Happily, DH picked this lovely colorway for his next socks. 

We thoroughly enjoyed watching the Olympics.  Good job, Canada!  Nice national anthem too.  We've been getting in some end of the season x-country skiing in.  Our snow is melting quickly now and we're probably done.  Bummer.  But we did plant a lot of bulbs last fall so spring should be very colorful! 

Project Monogamy in 2010

I'm thinking 2010 will be the year of project monogamy.  Of course I reserve the right to make 2010 about something else later, but for now, project monogamy.

Ingeborg has moved back into the rotation for the Knit a Norwegian KAL.  Very fun KAL, by the way.  I had knit a few inches 3 years ago, then tossed it aside willy-nilly.   After picking it up and knitting a few more inches I realized my gauge was way off so I ripped the body back to where the patterning starts above the hem.  I decided the sleeves would be my gauge swatches.  Knitting the sleeves first is fun!

DH's birthday is in the spring and he is getting this:

Not in finished form you realize.  Hopefully we will not have a repeat of the moose sweater debacle, ie. it will be finished by next year's birthday.  This pattern is in the elusive, out-of-print Dale of Norway book #79, but luckily Allegro Yarns offers the kit.  

I've been trying to read actual books in 2010 too instead of just Ravelry and blogs.  I was doing pretty well too until an iphone version of Chuzzle came out.  Too many nights my reading time (between knitting and falling asleep) is taken up by little exploding fuzzballs.  Could there BE a bigger waste of time?

Happy New Year!

I'll be happy to put 2009 behind us.  Unemployment in this area has been around 15%, and there have been a number of deaths lately.  Not immediately close to me, but close enough to knock the wind out of me a little.  Three friends/classmates from h.s., and our maintenance man at the library was murdered by his wife a couple of weeks ago.  Hopefully 2010 will be better.

I am excited about the Knit a Norwegian KAL that starts tonight (midnight Oslo time).  I'm returning to the long neglected Ingeborg.  I knit about 30 rows before I put it aside to knit VK's moose sweater 3 YEARS ago.  I dug it out yesterday and figured out where in the chart I left off.  I added an embarrassing number of stitch markers to help me stay on pattern. 

I didn't get quite as far on Irish Moss as I wanted to because I got distracted by a sock.  Here's the Irish Moss progress.

The little white spots are because I photographed it over snow.  It's actually knit pretty tightly.

And here's the distracting sock.

The pattern is Window Pane socks.  The more I do them, the more I love little twisted, traveling stitches.  I have some Di-ve Zenith in stash for a couple of Bavarian vests and I used some Christmas money to get a sweaters worth of the stuff on closeout at Webs.  Now that I have Maria Erlbacher's fabulous book in English, I really need to get moving on those.  (I have the German books, but my German consists of "Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht."  Surprisingly unhelpful for knitting.) 

We've had some swans on the lake for a couple of weeks.  Even a black one!

Pretty cool, isn't he?  Or she.  (The lake is starting to ice over lest anyone think the swans are walking on water.)

I'm off to knit a few more rows on Irish Moss before it's Ingeborg time.  I hope everyone has a healthy and happy new year.  I've made some wonderful friendships through blogging and Ravelry that are truly special to me.

I know I don't log into Typepad very often

... but does it have to be different every time?  Grrr... 

Anyway!

I cast on for Irish Moss a couple of days ago.  About a minute after sending off the second of 2 overlapping indexing projects. (Sorry, we've reached the season of the crappy indoor photos.)

There are also the ubiquitous boring, 2x2 rib socks.

I worked on them at knitting group and a couple people asked if I was going to felt them.  No, DH's feet are just that big.  I totally did not even notice that pooling when I was knitting them.

There's been some spinning:

I took a wonderful spinning class at the end of November.  I learned so much!  One of those things being that I really need a drum carder.  We played around with blending fibers and colors.  I found it interesting that no matter what colors I added, it just kept looking purple.  It's a magical drum carder!

And I have most of the pound of Blue-Faced Leister spun up that came with the wheel.  It's undyed although it looks yellow in the picture.  I'm debating about Kool-Aid dying or ordering some actual acid dye.  Would you like to hazard a guess as to the color? 

Soon I will knit with handspun, something I've yet to do.  I know, weird.