Fiberphile

Hello, hello!

It's been a busy week, again, and today I find myself in my last day of work here in Virginia. This week I've bought a house, sold a house, and worked on cleaning both of them. I've carted a carload of things to the new house already. I've stood in four DMV lines (and survived!). I've had last dinners and lunches with friends. The moving truck comes on Monday, and though I've still got lots of packing I want to finish before they get here (gotta keep the yarn organized you know?) I think I'll be ready when they do arrive. Would it sound too cliched for me to say that tomorrow will be the first day of the rest of my life? 'Cause that's how I feel about it.

Thanks for all the input on my next knitting project. It's like you all could read my mind! Before I had even read any of the comments, I had already started the orange Milano tank... with plans to start the other one once I get settled into my new home. As you can see, the tank has been a pretty quick knit and I'm nearly done with the back. It's been a mindless sort of thing to work on, which is the perfect project for these hectic times!

Last weekend I took a little time off from packing to go climbing again, this time down at Linville Gorge in NC. I had been there once before, but the mountain was socked into a cloud and there was no view to be seen. It probably made it easier for me since I had no way of knowing how high off the ground I was! Last weekend it was totally different with blue skies all around, and we had a good day of climbing. Inspired by my discovery of the Extreme Knitting Challenge that Teri is hosting, I tucked a sock in progress into my fanny pack and took a little knit break on one of the pitches to collect my thoughts!

And in an homage to the Harlot I even got a picture of the sock enjoying the view from the top.

You say goodbye, and I say hello

Thanks everyone for the comments on the pullover. I really appreciated hearing from everyone! And thanks for indulging my op note post.

The finishing frenzy is just about over here, and of course there's a little bit more to show for the effort.

What's this? Yup, Rowan's Fruity is all done! I set the sleeves in on Wednesday night, and had enough snippets of time on Thursday at work to get most of the side and sleeve seams done. A few ends to weave in, a light steaming with the iron to get everything to lay flat and voila! I haven't yet gotten a photo with it on, but I'm fairly pleased with it, and think it's a nice addition to the closet.

So now that the WIP list has been swept clean, I've got the fun of deciding what will come next. I don't have the answer to that just yet, but I'm batting around a couple of possibilities. The common denominator between the two is that both are knit in one piece and have minimal finishing. (Because, as you might guess, I'm a little OD'd on mattress stitching.)

On the left is the Knitting Pure & Simple Neckdown Summer Cardigan (about halfway down the page on the link) with some watermelon pink Manos cotton stria that's been languishing in the stash since going to the Superbowl Sale at Orchardside Yarn Shop. On the right is the Milano tank from the Dale Trend #123 pamphlet with some orange Dale Svale, both of which I picked up on sale a few weeks ago. I can see both being fun knits and useful FO's. Opinions? Which would you say hello to?

Op Note

Warning... The following post may not be appropriate for the faint of heart! (Oh yeah, and it's pretty photo heavy for you dial-up users)

Name: Shawl Collared Pullover
ID: Knit One Crochet Too pattern #0962
Pre-op diagnosis: collar-megaly
Procedure done: partial collar-ectomy with repair by grafting
Specimens taken: approximately 4" length of seed stitch collar
Anesthesia: one glass red wine (for the surgeon...)

Indications: Directions were followed carefully for the assembly of said patient, and all measurements were checked and double checked. On completion, the patient appeared fine from the front...

However, the examination of the back uncovered an unacceptable amount of bunching at the seam and collar droopage. Clearly the cause of this condition was too much length on the collar piece. Options for repair were discussed, and the leading prcedure seemed to be a complete removal of said collar, shortening, and re-attachment. SCP asked if there weren't any other more conservative means for dealing with the problem.

"Hmmm..." replied the surgeon. "I do seem to recall reading somewhere about a lengthening procedure, involving an incision at the site of the offending section."

Review of the literature indeed revealed that it had been done. (Fluffa. "Grafting, grafting, bay-bee! http://www.skinnyrabbit.com/projects/004286.php, June 2, 2004.) The surgeon took particular note of the author's statement " I would only do this sort of cutting and grafting on pieces knit in stockinette stitch. Maybe garter. But anything else? No, gracias!" and counselled the patient that the results may be uncertain, and risks included possible need for total collar reconstruction. The decision was made to proceed.

Procedure Note: The patient was prepped and the area for excision was identified and isolated...

An incision was made at the distal end of the excess and carried out across it's width...

Once the incision was completed, the excess was removed slowly and carefully until the desired endpoint was reached...

The wounds were cleaned...

And the suture was prepared...

Progress was made slowly on the seed-stitch grafting repair, however the promising results were encouraging.

Was the desired cosmetic result achieved?

(and click for an up close of the collar)

Two weeks and counting

Yup, I've only got two work weeks left here, and two weeks exactly until the moving truck comes to move me to Charlotte. I started packing this weekend, and it was an interesting experience. The question arose as to how much stuff should I really keep around? Of course there are those things I use all the time, and the "pretties" that make the house look nice. But then there are those things in the boxes in the attic, some of which have never been unpacked since my last move 3 years ago, and some of which came from my old bedroom at my parents' house.

I'd always thought I should keep these mementos from my past lives, but in packing I took a good hard look at lots of these things. I tossed the diary I kept for a month when I was 10, in which I detailed the great P.E. scooterboard hockey game where I scored the first goal and a cute boy asked me for my scooterboard. And the evil rival who thrust her board into his hands instead. I also tossed the diary I kept for a month at age 13; it's highlight was a rating system I devised to rate the cute boys in my class. Out went lots of poorly exposed and poorly shot photos, old birthday cards and letters from pen pals. Moving along the timeline a little, I finally got rid of those last few notes and textbooks from favorite college courses. I pared my high school life down to one box, and college and medical school were forced to share a box. It's strange to think that things that were so important to me back then have no importance to me now.

Anyway, I also continued on my finishing frenzy and made good progress on putting the shawl collared pullover from my sidebar together. All that remains is to ease the collar into its position, and that one will be done, done, done! I learned a new little trick for seaming this one up too, that I thought I'd share. It's knit with Noro Cash Iroha, which is a very loosely spun single, and in the past I'd had problems with it fraying and breaking while seaming due to it's construction. So I asked around on the Yahoo knitlist and the suggestion I ended up following (from Dawn Brocco of afterthought heel fame) was to add some spin to the yarn once I had it threaded in the tapestry needle and tacked to the pieces to be seamed. This worked really well, and I had no problems finishing each seam with just one length of yarn. She said she did this with Lambs Pride and really just about any single ply yarn.

I expect to finish this one up by the next time I post, and then will be on to Fruity. After that I'm allowing myself to start knitting something new again!

So far so good on my vow to finish all WIPs prior to starting anything new!

I started this little baby sweater more than a year ago, and it's been sitting on my bookshelf, partially assembled, for as long. It was the project I chose to "learn" cables on, so once the knitting was done I had accomplished what I wanted to get out of it. Looking at it now that I have some more knitting experience under my belt, I can find several imprefections in it, but I'll fold it and put it in a drawer and surely someone will be happy for it one day. The pattern is from Peter Pan booklet #280, and the yarn is Almedahls Saint Tropez, a linen/cotton blend that requests handwashing.

Next up on the finishing list is the shawl collared pullover from my sidebar list. The sleeves are going to work with me today, and need a little ripping back to correct some of the decreases on the cap. Once that's done, it should go together fairly easily, fingers crossed.

Blocked Socks

The sockapal-two-za socks have been blocked and are now neatly folded and put away until the September mail date.

Here they are in their post-blocking state:

And here's a detail of the cuff and front panel of them:

The picot cuff was fun to do, although a little on the fussy side, and I love how it has taken a curving shape from the yo's and decreases in the leg pattern. One more time, this was the Petticoat Sock from Melanie Falick's Weekend Knitting, done on US 2 Addi's with Debbie Bliss baby cashmerino. It took me just about a week to do these start to finish. The sport weight yarn certainly helped them to whiz by!

Now that they're done, I'm switching into cleaning out the closets mode, and that means finishing up those knits that are hanging over my head (and hanging around the side bar WIP list for too long). First up to be finished has been a baby sweater that I knitted over a year ago as my first cable project. Fruity and the Shawl Collared Pullover will follow soon. I'll only allow myself to start something new once I've got these done and put away!

What I did with a lazy Sunday

I finished the knitting on my Sockapal-two-za socks! Blocked photos to follow soon, hopefully...

And I managed to bake a cherry cobbler to take in to work today.

What Lucy did with a lazy Sunday...

It does this knitter's heart good to see she still likes the kitty pi!

Sock it to me

As promised, I have gotten stared on my Sockapal-two-za socks in the past week, and have a finished sock to show for my efforts. Here it is, reclining on my hydrangea. This is the Petticoat sock I showed last week from Melanie Falick's Weekend Knitting. My yarn crawl through Asheville did allow me to turn up some of the Gems Opal merino the pattern called for at Earth Guild, but they were a little limited in the colors they had in the appropriate quantities, and although I really wanted a pink color for my sock pal, I came out with the same grape that is shown in the book. No, don't adjust your monitors... the sock I've knitted is clearly pink. I've ended up using some Debbie Bliss baby cashmerino that I found at Yarntiques in Johnson City, TN on my way back home in the color I originally wanted. This is my first experience knitting with any of the Debbie Bliss yarns, and I have to admit that this cashmerino is really soft and wonderful to work with. I've heard that it can tend to pill quickly, so I'm not sure how it will really wear as a sock, but my fingers are crossed that it will hold up.

Asheville, as always, made for a great yarn trip. Unfortunately, right now I really don't need any more yarn, so I was (mostly) just looking. In total, I hit 6 yarn shops on that road trip, and could have gone to several more had there been time. (Kim, I know that I've got to make it inot Hendersonville one of these days!) I am so jealous of you residents of western NC! Two new shops to me were Sage Cottage, a little south of Asheville proper, and Purl's Yarn Emporium in the downtown area which has only been open for a couple of months according to the disinterested fellow minding the cash register. I also managed to find my way to Bovidae Farm and was totally charmed by the owners Rose and James. I petted their bottle fed corriedale lambs, and met the merino ram. Good times!

This week I finished up the last of my heart sachets and have sewed them up and filled them with some dried lavender flowers. (I got a pound of them online for cheap at BulkFoods online.) They smell so good! Right now they're on a shelf in my kitchen and I get a nice whif of them every time I head to the living room. Jody asked how much of the Koigu each one take up. I can't say for sure since I used multiple colors in some of them, but I'd guess you could get at least 4 out of one skein, and possibly even 5. I'd say I've done the equivalent of 3 from each of the skeins I bought, and still have a good bit of them left. Definitely a good use for leftover sock scraps! The pattern is available as a PDF file (free to all, not subscriber only) at Interweave Knits here.

I'm hoping to get back onto a regular posting (and blog reading) schedule now. My work paperwork is nearly done, mortgage issues are closer to being settled, and movers have been scheduled. It looks like the sellers for the house I'm buuying in Charlotte will repair everything I've asked, and my real estate agent tells me that the inspection concerning the settling issues has come out with good news, so it looks like that's going to go thorugh ok. Whew, I'll have a home to move into! My move-out/move-in date has been set for Aug. 1, and all that's left to do for that is to start packing!

Week's Recap

Wow! I can't believe another week has blown by and it's July already! Thanks to all for the comments on my tank. I'm really liking it and have worn it quite a bit since I finished it.

To catch you up on my life since I last posted:

The meeting at the Homestead was a good one, and the setting and scenery were gorgeous. I'm sorry I didn't get any pictures, but just imagine sitting on the wrap-around porch of a little cabin by a trout stream in the mountains. Lovely... when can I go again?

This week I spent a little time down in Charlotte, attending to some details there. First up was another walk-through this house I'm buying. It had a few issues on it's inspection, potentially the worst of which was some evidence of settling with some cracks in the morter between bricks in a couple of spots. That's definitely not something I'm prepared to deal with (emotionally or financially), so if the owners determine that they don't want to make it right, then I'm going to have to back out of the deal. (And scramble to quick find an apartment to live in!) Then it was off to the office where I had an afternoon full of more paperwork, talking with the computer guy, the phone guy, and interviewing an applicant to be my technician, which I was totally unprepared for but muddled through ok. The next morning was a meeting with the architect to go over the plans for the new office they're building that I'll eventually be in as the general ophthalmologist. That was a lot of fun! And my next task with that will be picking out all the furniture and equipment to go inside. I feel like I really fell into a great thing with this job. I mean, to have so much input into a brand new office is more than I ever would have expected from a new job!

In between everything else I've been trying to churn out more of the heart sachets I'm working on, and now have finished seven of them, none of them exactly the same. Two more to go and I'll have enough, but I may do a few more so that everyone they're intended for will have some sort of choice. These are fun to do, and each is really going quickly now that I know the pattern by heart (no pun intended), but I'll admit I am getting a little tired of them. I've done a little bit of stash enhancement this week too... on the way back home from Charlotte I stopped in Elkin, NC at Circle of Friends, a new yarn shop for me. There was a lovely selection of yarns and a great owner who was just chatty enough, but not too much, and very sincerely interested in her customers.
Here's what I bought there... 9 skeins of MaggiKnit's Irish Linen in a pretty mustard color (potentially to be a loose, mesh-y pullover unless I find another pattern I like better), and a copy of Malanie Falick's Weekend Knitting. And that brings me to today! I had planned on going climbing again this weekend, but the weather report predicts a 50% chance of not cooperating with that, so as soon as I hit post with this I'm going to head down the road to Asheville to pick up some Louet Gems sport weight merino for the Petticoat Socks from that book for my sockapal-two-za pal. I think these will be just the ticket for her and a lot of fun for me to knit too. Love that picot edging and the lace!

Everyone have a happy and safe July 4th weekend! (No looking down the barrel of that Roman candle to see if it's really lit, please!)