More yarn?

I went to my first Madrona earlier this month. I had kind of forgotten that it was going on, and it wasn't until the Friday after it started that I even realized that for the first time in my life 1) I was within driving distance of a fiber festival, and 2) I had the resources (car and driver's license at the same time) to get myself there. Since I could only go for a day I browsed for yarn in the marketplace and knitted with others in my LYS's group.

I picked up some Socks that Rock lightweight in Hobgoblin and Basan from the Blue Moon Fiber Arts booth...

...and some Jacob/alpaca/mohair blend in fingering weight from Toots LeBlanc & Co, plus a shawl pattern by Evelyn Clark...

...and some lovely brown wool yarn and a sweater pattern from Black Water Abbey Yarns. I think that stuff still smells like (clean) sheep.

My next goals should be to take a "knitting for speed" class and switch to audiobooks to free up my hands.

The Leyburn socks are not going very well.

I was up to the ankle on my first sock when I realized my gauge was a bit too loose, so I took the whole damn thing apart. I had also been thinking I don't really like the colourway (I only got it as a Stitch 'n' Pitch souvenir), so now I'm trying to decide whether to start again or to bail out of the KAL and either turn the yarn into something else or get rid of the yarn entirely.

The cats, on the other hand, are doing pretty well, and I hope they stay that way!

Spending some quality time with each other.


Melon in one of his favourite hang-out spots.

Maybe I'm just stalling

I keep thinking of stuff to blog about and then forgetting to actually blog it. Let's see...

1) I joined the Socks that Rock Leyburn KAL. The pattern is here and there are photos of the sock in a different colourway here. I'm using the Sea-Mar colourway that I bought last year at the Seattle Mariners Stitch 'n' Pitch. Pictures will come...at some point.

2) I finally finished the wool hat for my dad and mailed it off. It's either late or really really early though, since he's going off to Taiwan soon and probably won't need the hat by the time he gets back. The only reason I can think of for the delay is that I didn't like the pattern I started with so I modified it, then bound off the hat before realizing the mods made it too small, then frogged a bunch of it and re-modified it, then saw that I had about ten ends to weave in instead of the two I was hoping for, and then got depressed about the whole thing and left the hat on the coffee table for a few days until I finally decided to weave in the ends. But it's done and mailed off, and I hope it fits and that the rain on the way to the post office didn't wet the hat and result in mold formation en route to my parents' place, because that would just be too ridiculous.

3) Um...I think it was on my way to the post office that I saw the tiniest slug ever. Here's a photo, with a pencil and some sock yarn shown for scale.

Oh, you meant THAT France.

For the second TdF KAL intermediate sprint challenge, I decided to take the France option and cook up something French from this site (kindly listed by TdF KAL co-organizer Meg). Wouldn't you know it, but I managed to pick an ITALIAN dish! I'm generally not a cooking fiend, but I do enjoy making risotto once in a while so I chose the Stage 15 recipe before realizing I was in the wrong country, so to speak. On the other hand, the cyclists head to Italy in Stage 15, so I guess that makes it okay...?

Anyway, here's my version of the Mushroom Risotto. I tried to ratchet up the French mojo by adding some Debussy and Fauré sheet music and a placemat that I think is French. The cat may or may not have spoiled the effect.



Modifications: I used dried mushrooms instead of fresh, so instead of chicken stock and porcini powder I added the water left over from soaking the mushrooms. I think chicken stock would have worked better...next time I'll probably use half of each.

I think there was another modification but I forget what it was. Oh yeah, getting a bit carried away and making the whole shebang last night at 11 pm instead of, say, today before dinner.

The bag, the challenge

I'm taking the Knitting Option for the first TdF KAL challenge. I'm working on a BYOB market bag and had been planning to go all out with a delicately illustrated and moving story about a sloth who gets tired of hanging out in a tree, decides to see the world, sneaks onto a plane to France by hiding in a bag (coincidentally the one I'm making--a-HA!), and...I don't know, helps a lost puppy or makes some cool new friends or something...but some technical issues* came up so all I have is this photo and some explanatory text.



I decided to make the body of the bag with cream-coloured dishcloth cotton yarn and the stripes with blue and orange yarn to match the jersey of my KAL team, Team Rabobank. This triggered a quest to find dishcloth yarn in the right shades of blue and orange. The quest, alas, has not been successful, so I'm using acrylic instead. It's slightly uncomfortable, but not as much as I had expected and certainly no more than the cotton (which I find a bit hard on my wrists). The upsides are that 1) I'll have a nifty Tour de France-themed bag; 2) if I ever make to France and take it to the markets it will probably never, ever be mixed up with someone else's bag; and 3) when wielding the bag I'll probably be able to stun a sheep at 50 paces. I've never seen an orange this bright. It could be a secret weapon in a sheep-shearing contest...unless, of course, sheep are colour-blind. I should look that up.

*1) no scanner. 2) crappy drawing software. 3) pretty crappy drawing skills. 4) no story written yet.

Really short

I've joined a couple of knitalongs.
1) Summer of Socks
2) The Tour de France knitalong.

I also have an enormous Bucket o' WIP sitting by the TV chair.

Eek!

There was something else I wanted to say but now I forget what it is.

Excuses, excuses

I'm still here! Between work and life I just haven't had the time to post anything, and even now putting up photos is a bit of a stretch. So, here's a mostly photo-less summary of the last few weeks:

1) Despite the cat's best efforts, I finished the cowl neck on my tank top and started on the ribbing around the armholes. It turned into a slightly painful lesson on the importance of reading through the entire pattern before knitting. Last year I had knitted a tank top from a pattern that included slipping stitches at the edge of the armhole for a tidier look, so I thought, "Hey, I know this new pattern says to knit but I'm going to try that slipped stitch thing". Unfortunately, it turned out that later on I had to pick up 140 stitches along that edge, which meant picking up 2 stitches per slipped stitch, which resulted in a really tight edging on my first try. I decided to use larger needles to pick up the stitches on the other armhole and re-do the first one if this tactic worked.

The good news is that the second armhole is indeed looser...but that means now I have to rip out and re-do the first edging!

2) The Knit from your Stash thing also isn't going so well, unless I'm allowed to loosen the definition of "stash" to include yarn that has been in my possession for less than a day before I start knitting with it.

3) I finished my rainbow socks!

Yarn: Socks that Rock, in the "Fire on the Mountain" colorway
Pattern: Wendy's Toe-up pattern, with ribbing on the legs.

Sloth-a-long

So far this month I have joined three something-a-longs. Here they are; which one is not like the others?

1. 


2. 


3. 

a) 1
b) 2
c) 3
d) What are you talking about? I think you're typing in your sleep again.
e) Hey, this is a trick question! They're all alike!

I suppose the correct answer is context-dependent. The first two are related in that I might be able to get my yarn stash under control if I stick to both at the same time, but all three will involve a certain amount of self-discipline.

My husband has just pointed out that #3 is going to seriously cut into the time I have for either #1 or #2, unless I can learn to knit while walking. I must go think about this.

Amazing Lace Challenge #6

Another week, another last-minute-ish entry to The Amazing Lace.
Challenge #6 is "to post a photo of your lace being proudly worn or displayed by the strangest, funniest, or most unlikely model you can find." For your viewing pleasure, may I present the Tina Shawl in its completed and cat-free glory.


It is shown with (clockwise, from top left) a model replica of Gondor from Lord of the Rings (I forget the scale but judging from the movie it's probably 1:1,000,000), a model sailing ship that has been falling apart ever since the day I assembled it, and 2 images of a Ford Model T, found here.

Amazing Lace Challenge #4

Challenge #4 of The Amazing Lace was to post a photo of what our lace might look like if we bound it off right now. The first thought that popped into my mind was that a square shawl with half of its edging done, bound off, would look like...well...a square with unfinished edging. Fortunately, the Tina Shawl (which still hopes to land that plum TV role) has put a bit more thought into the challenge and come up with some alternatives. For your consideration, I present the Tina Shawl...

...doing COMEDY (as a sloth hammock)...



...and TRAGEDY (as a half-eaten kite, in tribute to Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts, and the Kite-Eating Tree).



Gotta go, the shawl is booting me off the computer so it can look up agents.

Amazing Lace Challenge #3

Yeesh, this is seriously close.

So Challenge #3 of the Amazing Lace was to write a poem about/to/etc. your lace. After a maddening spell of writer's block I decided to go with the Fibonacci sequence (where you take the preceding number and add it to the current number to get the next number...oh heck, go here and you'll see what I mean). So, here goes. Numbers at the start of each line show how many syllables there are.

0)

1) Shawl!

1) Name?

2) Tina.

3) Knitted how?

5) Start in the center,

8) A square panel in leaf pattern.

13) (If you knit in public you may be asked, Is that Birch??

21) Whatever you do, don't say to them What, the needles? That just sounds silly. Believe me.)

34) After you finish the center, you pick up along the edge. Then you knit a square in the round on circular needles. Sounds strange but it works!

55) You spend quite a while working on the border. I think it took me six weeks. Somewhere along the way, your shawl may develop a personality. It may dream about fame and fortune. I blame this on reality TV.

89) Finally, you do the edge and join it to the border. The border stitches are live, so if you don't use lifelines, be careful or something might fall off the needles while you're not looking. By now the Tina Shawl's personality is in full bloom and all it wants to know is WHEN ON EARTH ARE YOU GOING TO BLOCK IT??? ...Maybe I should go work on mine. I'm signing off.

Amazing Lace Challenge #2

From time to time things get very strange around here. From now until Labour Day, this will probably mean I'm responding to another challenge issued by The Amazing Lace. Challenge #2 is to post a photo of extreme knitting. Click here to see the team profile.

Okay, you've been warned.
_______________________________
X-treme peril!
(as told by the sloth)

I suppose I should have known my promises would come back to haunt me. As soon as the shawl heard that Challenge #2 for The Amazing Lace was to take a photo of some extreme knitting, it informed me that, unless we did some of the wild animal taming I had mentioned before, it would, and I quote, "look for a teammate with some backbone, and don't give me that business about three-toed sloths having nine neck vertebrae instead of the usual seven, thank you very much". So I said, "Okey-dokey," and we sat down to make some plans.

The shawl pointed at a map of Africa. I pointed at the bank balance. The shawl raved about lions on the plain. I explained as gently as I could that leaving town was out of the question at this point, never mind leaving the continent. As the shawl sulked and muttered again about backbones, one of the cats happened to wander by.

The shawl brightened. "Of course...the cat," it breathed. "We can taunt the cat. I'll be the bait, you'll wave me around, the cat will freak. It'll be just like a bullfight. And you know what? A photo of THIS would honour the extreme danger I face daily when I'm knitted near that creature. Honey, this is so perfect!"

I wouldn't have called the plan perfect, but it certainly was cheaper than going to Africa.

That night, when the cat was about to have his regular bout of the crazies, I whistled and gently waved the shawl in his face.



The cat pounced. The shawl freaked.

We tussled while spectators cheered and took photos.



Finally, after a struggle lasting for seconds an eternity, the cat got bored and walked away fled*. The shawl remained unscathed (miraculously), and after a soak in some woolwash it even felt normal enough to sign a few autographs and make rude noises at the cat.

I think that next time we'll use hamsters.

Tabbies harmed in the fray: 0
Shellshocked shawl: 1

*The shawl's words, not mine.

Amazing Lace Challenge #1

The first challenge of The Amazing Lace was to give a profile and official team photo. Here goes! Check out their site for more info.

Unusual pairing for summer contest draws disbelief

PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

In an unprecedented move that has stunned arboreal and lace communities around the world, a local three-toed sloth has teamed up with a Shetland-style lace shawl for a summer-long competition.

"I'd been knitting secretly for a few years," said the sloth. "Back at home it's not really encouraged--the folks always tell me I should nap in my free time. But when I heard about The Amazing Lace, I thought it would be the perfect chance to show everyone what a great hobby this could be for tridactyls everywhere."

There was only one problem: the sloth needed a teammate.

"I've tried a few shawls. My first one was something in mohair on really big needles that I'd rather not talk about. Then I did a shawl with a sheep motif. I used alpaca yarn, so maybe an alpaca motif would have been more appropriate, but I was having enough trouble getting the sheep right, never mind mucking with the pattern. Then I came across something called the Peacock Feathers Shawl. That was great! I had a bit of trouble with the repeats but by the time I was done I could fix sections of the shawl without having to frog--you know, undo?--entire rows. So at that point I was feeling a bit bold. I wanted to try something a bit grander, you know? Then I found out about the Tina Shawl."

Designed by Dorothy Siemens of Fiddlesticks Knitting, the Tina Shawl consists of a center panel, a border picked up from the panel's edges, and outside edging. When asked how "grand" the shawl was, the sloth shuddered delicately.

"I tried to figure out how many stitches there are in the shawl. The center panel has about 150 rows, with 113 stitches in each row. Then you pick up 120 stitches along each edge of the panel, and you increase by about 8 stitches every two rows...the border has about 68 rows...then you do the edging...And there's something different going on each row, lace-wise. I get a headache thinking about the whole thing, so now I just follow the pattern and don't ask any questions."

The Tina Shawl lounged nearby during this interview, looking more like a jumble of white Jaggerspun Zephyr than an actual shawl.

"I've been compared to rice noodles," the shawl admitted. "But it's only because I'm still on the needles. You just wait until I'm done...the fans will come knocking on my door!"

When asked about the competition, the shawl said, "You know, usually this isn't my kind of thing. But then the sloth mentioned blog hits and spectators and publicity, and all those other magic phrases...I had changed my mind even before precision choreography came up."

It hastily added, "And yes, I think it's a perfect chance to show the world that sloths and lace shawls can work together. Everyone thinks that mixing claws and openwork is just a bad idea, and they are so wrong."

The sloth and the Tina Shawl haven't agreed yet on a winning strategy but both members had strong opinions on what that should be.

The sloth: "Teamwork, teamwork, teamwork, and naps."

The shawl: "And maybe an agent...you know, for talk shows to buff our image."

The announcement of the pairing was met with mild skepticism from both arboreal mammals and lace projects.

"What are they going to do, have the shawl carry the sloth around while the sloth naps? I've seen the competitors, and those two will have to come up with a better strategy if they plan to win this thing," said a member of the Ocean State Sloth Leisure Association, on condition of anonymity.

When asked for its reaction, a feather-and-fan scarf shook its ends. "Those Tina Shawls...they think they're hot stuff, but poke them with a needle and they run home whimpering. I give that team two weeks."

The sloth and the Tina Shawl dismissed the remarks. "It's all fear and closed-mindedness," said the sloth. "This is a step none of them have dared to take, so of course they say we'll fail. Give them a few weeks and they'll all be behind us."


Official Team Photo

Prep time and some loose ends

The shawl has devised a frantic and somewhat random training regimen for our great summer quest, involving slow walks...



...weightlifting...



...dreams of world conquest international travel (I draw the line at teaching it how to book plane tickets)...



...and culture.



If nothing else happens this summer, at least it might understand more philosophy than I do.

Oh! Yesterday I received a flyer from a LYS advertising some new services, e.g. sweater finishing, and immediately thought of a certain tentacular baby blanket that could finally be delivered from its shameful state finished. But then I started worrying about cost and personal pride and not wanting to admit that I'm absolutely hopeless with darning in ends, etc., and it escalated until that very evening I decided to make a final attempt.

Why, you may ask, is there no photo? All I will admit is that my husband took one look, wailed in sympathy and offered to pay half the cost of having the LYS do the ends, if only it would get the blanket out of our apartment and delivered to the intended recipients before their baby hit puberty.

Tabbies retrieved from top of refrigerator today: 1

Bad rhymes and belligerent shawls

Tina, Tina
So serene (hah)*
How does your border grow?
In fits and starts,
With crafty arts
And loads of tinking, row on row.

See the stitch markers? Those are the mistakes I have to fix. But there has been progress! A few more rows have appeared since the first photo, though you may have to look hard to find them. Half of the fiddly fan-shaped bits are done, and the other half WILL submit to their fate**.

In other news, Tina and I have joined The Amazing Lace.

I heard about it from silverarrowknits, whose friend Theresa is one of the organizers. The shawl was initially reluctant, but succumbed when I conjured visions of lace taming wild animals and doing precision choreography before cheering spectators. If things turn out differently I may have to run away.

And finally, behold the resident sheep.


He had coped magnificently on his own for nearly 6 years, a paragon of ovine stoicism, and now he says he's lonely and wants a friend! Whatever will we do?

Hint:

Manos...hmmmmmm.

Stay tuned!
By the way, the sheep was from Debbie Bliss's book Toy Knits.

*I warned you it would be bad.
**The one in which they are proud to be full members of a shawl, not the one in which they escape from the needles and run around town flirting with doilies.