Fiberphile

Gift Knitting

I've put aside the Brooks Farm yarn for a little while to focus on some gift knitting. I've got 3 skeins of Koigu KPPPM that I'm going to use for some of these heart sachets that were pictured in the Summer '05 IK. (Pattern PDF can be downloaded here, about halfway down the page.) These are going to be for the office staff in my current office, because they've always supported me in trying to make things work there. They've seen me knitting, and more than one has suggested I ought to make everyone a pair of socks. Nine pairs? And none of them for me? Hmmm, might drive me crazy, but I've already got 1.3 hearts done, and I'm enjoying the process immensely. I'll fill the sachets with some lavendar flowers that I ordered fairly cheaply from this site.

My other gift knitting (that I have yet to start) is a pair of socks for my Sockapal-2-za pal. I had so much fun with this the first time, that when Alison announced the summer tour, I just had to sign up. I'm pretty excited about the pal I got, and I really wish I could share her blog with you all now, but I guess that would defeat the point of the whole "secret" thing. Anyway, I'm in the midst of picking just the right yarn and pattern for her and might try to start those this weekend.

I did finish the intarsia tank finally, after the yarn I needed came last week, and the never-ending ends have all been woven in. I'm pretty happy with this as a summery tank. The specs, in case you're interested: Intarsia tank from Katia magazine #44, using Katia Idea Jeans in 6 colors. This yarn is a blend of linen, cotton, and nylon. It was pretty twine-y to work with, but has softened a bit with a wash and makes a nice fabric to wear. This was my first foray into intarsia work, and was a relatively easy piece to try it out on with it's large color blocks.

Today after work I'm heading up to Warm Springs, VA to the Homestead for a weekend conference. It should be a really nice weekend, and I've been looking forward to it for a while since I've never been there before. This meeting probably isn't one I'll knit during, but I think there'll be some knitting time in the evenings on the porch of our little cabin overlooking a river. And there will be good food, some gorgeous scenery, perhaps a little hiking, and the Jefferson Pools. Nevermind that this falls perfectly in line with my plan to have as many 3 day weekends between now and the time I finish this job as I can get away with! (July 4th weekend next week!)

Ya'll have a good one!

A wad, quantified

What constitutes a wad of anything? Here are some definitions I found online:

pack: compress into a wad; "wad paper into the box"
batch: (often followed by `of') a large number or amount or extent; "a batch of letters"; "a deal of trouble"; "a lot of money"; "he made a mint on the stock market"; "it must have cost plenty"
chew: a wad of something chewable as tobacco
jam: crowd or pack to capacity; "the theater was jampacked"
www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn2.1

My definition includes 500 yds of Brooks Farm Primero mohair. May I present exhibit A:

I've been playing around with some of my MD purchases this week, and the first thing I had to do was to ball up the Brooks Farm yarn I bought. Let me first say that it almost physically hurt me to rape these gorgeous skeins, but it had to be done. I tried winding them up on my ball winder, but they got too big and ended up flying across the room most ungracefully. So I wound them by hand, using the Japanese center pull ball technique that can be found in several places (that one's a direct link to PDF file) online.

Yesterday I knit up a gauge swatch with the blue/copper skein, starting with US 5's on the bottom, then 4's and 3's. Interestingly the 4 and 5 both came to 5 st/in although the stitches were much neater on the 4's. The 3 gave me neater stitches yet, and came out at 5.5 st/in. My next job will be to swatch some 2 color slip stitch patterns I've seen in Barbara Walker's Second Treasury to see what sort of things I can do combining the two yarns. I'm really not planning on designing a whole sweater myself, but it may come to that if I can't find any patterns that might work with whatever stitch pattern I decide on.

So I've really just been playing around with my yarn this week... still waiting for more yarn to come to finish the intarsia tank, and I've been putting off setting in the sleeves on Fruity just 'cause. In the rest of my life I've been a form-filling, signature-signing fool, working on getting privileges at Charlotte hospitals. This weekend I'm going rock climbing again, this time to a new place (for me) in Kentucky.

A bad day, but getting better...

Ugh.

I can't tell you all how happy I will be to finally be done with work here in SW VA, and get on with my move this summer. More bad work things happened today to put me in such a foul mood this morning, but it's dissipating a little now and I'm trying to think happy thoughts.

So let's get on with good things, shall we?

I had a good time at the family reunion this weekend, better than I expected. This was with my father's side of the family. He is one of 7 brothers and sisters, and at this point the cousins and 2nd cousins are too numerous to count. We had a pretty good showing, and there were 43 of us there total, including one family who made the trek from Alaska to be there. I've always felt fairly removed from this side of the family because growing up they were all from Iowa, with my family being the one outlier from Virginia. It takes a little catching up to feel part of the family again, but I always seem to learn so much about everyone and this trip was no exception.

I took along the IK Go With the Flow socks, and managed to finish them up on the trip. For these I used Plymouth Sockotta on US 1 needles. The yarn is a good summer sock yarn to work with since it is 45% cotton, 40% superwash wool, and 15% nylon. I loved the colors on this one (#14); with the shades of green and blue they're just so "me" and got a lot of comments from the family.

I also started my second tank from the Katia #44 book I bought a few months ago. It will be this tank with blocks of color done in intarsia, my first effort with that particular technique. As you can see, I made a good bit of progress on the trip, but now I'm at a standstill because I've run out of the dark green color. I've ordered it from the only online source I could find, and I'm still waiting to hear if they've actually got the color in stock. I've already made one change from the pattern too; for the front I've reversed all the colors, so that the stripes will match up along the sides. It's not really a major change, but I think it will make a big difference to me in the aesthetic of the sweater. And it will make the seaming easier, because I'll know for sure that I'm matching row to row with my mattress seams. One thing I'm not looking forward to (but ought to do now since I'm waiting for more yarn) is weaving in all those ends!

One more little thing... my mom ordered some vintage pattern books she'd been wanting from eBay, and one of them came as a "set" with some that she's got no interest in keeping, and I don't think I need them either. The best of that bunch was this issue of Bernat Handicrafter Book #36, copyright 1953. It is mostly a collection of sock patterns (39 of them!) mostly utilizing fair isle and intarsia, but a couple with some nice cables. There is also a men's vest pattern, and a pattern for golf club covers thrown in as well. I'll send it to the first person to email me asking for it. Just looking for a good home for this!

UPDATE: The Bernat book has been spoken for.

Picture Day

Finally! I have some pictures to show you, and the subject of the day is the Violets by the River shawl. This sweetie was finished over the weekend in my effort to decrease mess in my house before I actually have to start packing everything up.

Pattern: Violets by the River by Hazel Carter and sold through Blackberry Ridge Woolen Mill

Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill's Cascade Fingering Silk 100% silk yarn in the color Tropical Storm. I picked this yarn up on my ski trip this winter at Knitch in Steamboat Springs, CO.

Started: April 15, 2005

Finished: June 4, 2005

Here's a pic of it laid out and blocking. I probably bound off the side edges a little tightly (even though I made a conscious effort to be loose with that), and therefore didn't attain the nice waves on the river pattern that are pictured on the original design, but I like it anyway. It is a fairly small shawl (and was described as such in the pattern), and I had a good bit of the yarn left over. I thought briefly about ripping and enlarging it since the pattern gives some directions for doing that, but I'd have had to go all the way back to the violet portion to add repeats there, and I just wasn't that interested in doing that.

My favorite part of the knitting was making the little bees at the top. The first several rows of that involved making then dropping yo's, and I had a hard time visualizing a bee being formed from that. On the last row of the pattern though, all those loose stitches were knit together, and that, along with a few extra cast on stitches, made it all come together for me.

Other knitting has primarily involved working on my current immediate gratification project, aka the Go With the Flow socks. If you'd like to see the first one complete, click he-ah.

Tomorrow morning I'm heading to Ohio for a weekend family reunion. I've been told there won't be any accessible LYS's, and that I should be prepared for lots of "family time." Think I need to find me another sock to take along...

I'm a slacker

And I haven't done any finishing on Fruity since I seamed the shoulders and did the neck edging.  In lieu of showing off my finished sweater, I'll direct you to Polly's blog where she is currently showing off her version of the same one, and it looks great!  Perhaps seeing hers will encourage me to work on mine a little tonight?

Instead of finishing Fruity, I  picked up my Violets by the River shawl and finished it off!  I don't have any pictures to show today because I don't have my laptop with me, but I'll get those on here soon.  And over the weekend I picked up some stashed sock yarn and started the IK Go with the Flow socks.  One down, and one nearing the heel.  Again, pictures are on the other computer, and I promise to have some to show you soon!

Distracted

That's the word that best describes my mind-set for the past week or so. In that period of time I've gotten quite a bit done though:

1. My application for North Carolina medical licensing is finally done, and was overnighted to the board on Tuesday. I'm waiting for confirmation that it is all complete, but I'm pretty sure they should have everything they've asked for. Now it's just a waiting game for the license so that I can proceed with other details.

2. I finally signed the contract for my new job and put that in the mail Tuesday as well. I'm hoping for a September 1 start date, but it may be a moving target if I get bogged down on the licensing and credentially process.

3. I've accepted an offer on my house from the couple that looked at it over Memorial Day weekend. Now I'm just waiting for the real estate lawyer to draw up the official contract so that we can both sign it and then I'll be pretty sure that it will all go through. If this works out, it will have been a perfect transaction and I will avoid the whole house-selling mess you go through with an agent and an official listing. No keeping my home in perfect condition every day on the off chance someone will want to see it.

4. I looked at 19 houses in Charlotte last weekend. The one I really really loved was just above my price point, and possibly overpriced (but in that neighborhood everything tends to sell on the high side), so I went for the next one on the list. I made an offer on Wednesday and heard yesterday that it was accepted! It is nearly 2000 sq ft, 3 BR, 1.5 bath, and built in 1937. It has nice hardwood floors, and the kitchen has been recently redone and was done well. The major negative for me is that there's no covered parking at all, but there would be room to build a carport or even a garage in the future. Wanna see it? Click!

With all that going on, there's been slow knitting, and even less keeping up with knit-blogs. I did manage to finish up the knitting on Fruity last night though, and the front and back are blocking now. I'm hoping to do the finishing on that this weekend, as well as work on finishing up the other things that have been languishing on my dining room table and in the sidebar of this blog. I think until my move is complete I'm going to try to be a one-knit kind of gal (maybe 2 at the most, if one is a pair of socks...). So I haven't even thought about what the next new thing I cast on will be, although I'd really like to use some of the yarn I picked up at MS&W.

Hopefully some photos next week! Everyone have a good weekend.