Not one stitch

Well, I followed Carrie K's advice and went out to Knit Night last night and had a blast. First off, I got the parking spot RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE SHOP. If that isn't a portent of a good time, I don't know what is. Loads of great people were there, and DD1 was very well-behaved.

To put it more accurately, I think DD1 had a blast. The moment she hopped out of the car, she announced to all and sundry, "I'm four!" and it just got better from there. She had some food, played with her toy dog, explored the front of the shop (the annuals delighted her; fortunately we were able to warn her off picking them in time), met the owner's children, went with Elizabeth (fellow SnBer, not my baby daughter) to grab food (thank you so much, Elizabeth, I'm delighted you had fun, and I blush at your good mothering comment), ogled all the pregnant ladies...what more could a 4-year-old want, eh?

And then I took her to the back of the shop where Denny was spinning. Well. Not only was this desperately interesting because she could watch yarn being made before her very eyes, but there was also a machine involved with moving parts and everything! Very, very exciting stuff. She wanted to touch it, she wanted to play with it. Obviously we all made it clear that neither of these two things were okay since a) touching a spinning wheel in action was liable to result in pain; and b) Denny was already using the spinning wheel. But Denny did give DD1 a wee fluff of roving for her to take home with her (thank you, Denny :) and Rachel H, who also had her wheel there, showed DD1 how to press the treadle to work the wheel. And that was it for the evening, because for the next - oh, I don't know, half an hour? forty-five minutes? - DD1 did nothing but treadle. (I had to assume this was okay with Rachel since she didn't seem to want to kick DD1 off the wheel - thank you very much, kind lady, for putting your spinning plans on hold for the evening.)

This of course has fuelled my desire for a spinning wheel even more. Particularly when Mel told me that her daughter can treadle the wheel for ages and ages at a time. (I swoon to think how much more I could get done around the house.) And Denny backed Mel up. Alas, for my ship to come in...

But I also had a wonderful time. People loved seeing the baby and I got to chatchatchat to my heart's desire. (Well, to be truthful, 'to my heart's desire' would have involved staying a lot later than we did...however, since we already ended up being about 40 minutes late picking DH up from work, that wasn't going to happen.) It came home to me how much I had been missing these great people. I am definitely going to pack the kids up and do this again sometime, and I'm not going to wait another three months to do it.

Now. Ask me how much actual knitting I accomplished during the evening?

Didn't even bring it out of the bag. (Much like the digital camera, actually...sorry for the lack of pictures.) But ask me if I care. :)

In other news, we are highly busy over here at Insanity Headquarters getting ready for DD1's kids birthday party (the family birthday party was several weeks ago). I came downstairs yesterday evening after DH had done a big Costco run, and my heart almost stopped as I saw what was lying in the hall. YARN. Bags of it, in bulk, all wrapped up, and...wait...no.

What I had thought was yarn was instead...are you ready for this?...hamburger buns.

I may need help.

But c'mon, I mean look at this...

If your eye wandered over that, would you not think it was yarn? Back me up here.

The Girlfriend Shrug for DD1

I knitted sleeve #2 up to the same point as I'd left off on sleeve #1, and then I went back and forth between sleeves, making them absolutely identical until such time as I couldn't knit another row. Then I used what I had left over to cast on provisionally for the white strip up the back (there was exactly enough left for that, I felt like a total god).

White strip is looking good so far:


Unfortunately I don't think it's wide enough. I'll measure the whole back when I'm done, but I may have to cut the back on each side and insert two single-braid white cable strips to widen it up. Stay tuned.

The Poncho for DD1

Coming along! I think I'm just an inch or two away from being able to start the bottom edging:

Cotton lace shawl

Having given in and used someone else's pattern instead of making up my own was gnawing at me somewhat, so I've started an attempt at my own design. It is going both well and badly at the same time, if you can believe that. Some aspects of lace knitting design I totally get, but I'm woefully ignorant in other areas. I'm test-driving the pattern now, so I can see where I'm going wrong and figure out what is and isn't possible. It's certainly a very interesting process. Mostly the thing does look like what I wanted (so far), but I'm under no illusion that this happy state of affairs will continue. Stay tuned - watching me tear my hair out go through the learning process should be amusing.

Fortunately, my rank newbie status in designing complex lace patterns doesn't affect my ability to teach others how to knit lace, so I'm still mentally planning a class. (Carrie K, I suspect you are totally right that the yarn shop owner could see this in my eyes...but she also reads my blog occasionally, so I knew she'd figure it out sooner or later. :)

Advance notice

I haven't talked to DH yet about this, so it's not set in stone, but I think I'm going to try and come out to a Lettuce Knit SnB this week. I really miss everybody and I really want to show off my baby, :) so to heck with waiting until DH gets a Wednesday evening off work (it's never gonna happen), I'm going to bring both kids and to heck with DD1's bedtime. (She will probably be bored to tears, but hopefully the weather will be nice enough that everyone will be knitting outside and she can putter around. Plus I'll probably leave around 8 instead of the usual 9.) DH needs to be consulted for this trip because it involves me taking the car that evening, so we will need to make sure he can get to and from work without it.

The Girlfriend Shrug for DD1

I may be screwed. Reason: I cannot find the bloody pattern for this thing. I've hunted high and low and there is no sign of it. It certainly doesn't help that the pattern is on one measley sheet of paper the size of an index card:



...which makes it even harder to find than an 8.5x11" sheet of paper.

Without it, I'm not sure how wide the white strip in the middle of the back should be, nor how many stitches I should be picking up around the edge. Argh!!!

Update: OMG!!! In desperation, I Googled "girlfriend shrug" to see if there were any bloggers out there who had the pattern - I was going to send them pleading emails for the details I need, with accompanying photos of my copy of the pattern as proof that I do actually own it and was merely stupid enough to lose it. However, the very first hit that Google came up with was the pattern itself! It's right there online for free! Oh, what a happy day. Oodles of thank-yous to Wendy Bernard. Hee hee!

The Poncho for DD1

Work continues. I have to do a total of 13" with the variegated colour. After that, I start the edging. At the last measurement, I'd done about 10". Slowly, the finish line approaches!

Baby girl dress

I started in on a second swatch for the edging, this time using the leftover denim yarn from DD1's Carnival Coat, which looked like it would 'pop' cables better. It does...but I'm still not achieving the look that I want. (Curses.) I do have a few more ideas before I give up and just do a simple braid cable instead.

Knitted Petal Doily

Well, I hunted around the Internet for examples extremely cool lace designs that would look good in fine cotton. Stuff like this, or this, or this, or this, or...well, you get the idea. I figured I could take a look at all these examples and come up with something of my own.

Well...I realised I need a bit more experience actually doing lace 'medallions' before I can slap a design of my own together in just a few hours. (A few weeks and I would probably be able to do it...but I wanted to start soon so that the store would have a sample ASAP, since laceweight cotton makes such great 'summery' projects, and we are already over halfway through June.) So I said, to heck with (for now) the idea of designing my own, just go with something gorgeous and simple and not too huge of someone else's.

Therefore, this morning I cast on this vintage pattern. I didn't have five 2.75mm DPNs (I have three available in my needle caddy, which ain't exactly helpful), so I went with 3mms instead. It was of course rather tricky to start up with, but it's coming along very nicely now and I'm having fun with it.



When I went to the SnB at the shop this afternoon, the owner, June, said she was indeed keen on the idea of having it as a store sample, and encouraged me to keep going. She also asked if I'd be willing to teach a lace class after the sock class was finished?

Well, duh...I said yes. :) (I didn't admit to her that I had actually started to mentally plan a lace class while I was casting on for the doily.)

Startitis

Yep, I've been hit with it - a rather serious case, too. I just can't seem to stop looking for new stuff to cast on.

The Poncho for DD1

I really must stop browsing through my copy of Cabin Fever's Top Down for Toddlers. Every time I do it, I come away with something new on the needles. This time it's "The Poncho". I decided this was the perfect opportunity to burn through some variegated sportweight acrylic I had kicking around in the stash. So far, it's working:



I throught making the neck and hem solid white would add some pizzazz. So far, I like it a lot. Unfortunately, each row keeps getting bigger and bigger, so it takes longer and longer to make progress. But it's still a pretty quick knit.

Baby girl dress

I haven't done any of the designing that The Schedule has dictated for me for this year yet, so I figured I'd better get on it. Unfortunately, I haven't started up any of the design projects that The Schedule says I should. Instead, I dug up some old pattern notes I worked out for a baby dress. Right now I'm swatching out the chart for the large cable that I want to use as the hem, using some cream sportweight acrylic. It's looking okay, but the cables aren't 'popping' as much as I want them to. So I'm thinking of going with a different yarn. Time to stash-dive!

Fleur-de-lys socks

The browsing through my books continued, and I plucked Nancy Spies's Here Be Wyverns off the shelf. This, if you've never heard of it, is a glorious resource. She's basically gone through all kinds of medieval textile and other artwork from all over the place, and charted it all. If you do any kind of art or craft that can work from a chart - beadwork, quilting, mosaic, cross-stitch, whatever - you can use this book. I love it.

What got me this time was a gorgeous repeating pattern of fleur-de-lys on zigzag stripes. I desperately, desperately want to make socks or mittens out of it, using the leftover alpaca yarn from my grandmother's shawl:



Admittedly, I'm already using the blue for an Orenburg-style shawl, but at this point I don't much care, I want the socks. I don't think stacking the pattern repeats on top of each other would look very good, because that would make a bunch of zig-zags, which I think would clash with the look of the fleur-de-lys. So instead I think I'm going to separate each repeat of the pattern with a texture pattern using the grey. I think it will look stunning. I have no idea when I'm going to be able to cast on for it, though.

Lace socks for Mom

Speaking of socks...I think I've found the pattern I want to use to make socks for my mom out of the Sea Silk I bought. The summer issue of Knitty has just come out, and I'm interested in 'Vog on. The lack of legs on these socks means I don't have to worry about whether the socks will slouch uncomfortably down my mom's legs when she wears them. And they're lace, which will look super with the yarn. And they're really pretty. And they won't take up too much yardage, which means I might be able to make a small wrap with the remaining yarn. All good stuff.

Reincarnation of white fuzzy blanket

My older daughter has this white knitted baby blanket that I got at my shower. It was made by a friend of my mom's, and it's absolutely lovely. I particularly loved it because it was not only pretty, but also, it matched the nursery decor. DD1 has also developed a great affection for it, and when she and I were going through all the baby blankets prior to DD2's birth, this was the one that she decided she wanted to keep for herself.

The blanket itself has a very simple lace pattern, and yesterday I charted it. So I can make a copy of the blanket whenever I want. (I figure this is very important for DD1's emotional well-being just in case the original gets lost or destroyed.) Unsurprisingly, Startitis is telling me that the time I want to start it is NOW.

However, I'm thinking I'd like to make the first copy for DD2, using some very pretty pink/blue/white variegated acrylic from my friend's grandmother's stash. So we'll see. Right now this is just in the planning stage.

Cotton lace shawl

Last week I was at Knitters Attic and Mercedes suggested that I do a lace shawl from the really lightweight cotton as a store sample. Well. You know I wanna. So I've been hunting through some lace patterns in my library, but what I think I really want to do is design something myself. That way I could help the shop push the yarn and have a design to sell at the same time.

Girlfriend Shrug for DD1

At last - a project that isn't new. But it is a project that I haven't worked on in a while, and I did recently buy the yarn I'll be using to finish it up, so the project feels new. Thus it is yet another symptom of my current bout of Startitis.

The shrug is coming along very nicely. The second sleeve is done and I'm just finishing up the back:


(pictured here with the first sleeve so you know I'm not just recycling photos)

Not much longer and then I can start figuring out what kind of pattern I want to do to join the two sleeves at the back!

Muppet roadkill

I've rounded the second corner of the edging, but now I'm having second thoughts. I'm looking at the edging along the top and I'm pretty sure I didn't pick up enough stitches for it, because the blanket is puckering there. As much as I despise the idea of ripping back over ten edging repeats, I think I might just have to do it to get a decent-looking blanket. The big problem is that I'm not sure I have enough yarn for the extra repeats. So I'm kind of avoiding the blanket at the moment.

And speaking of things starting up, the LYS and I have worked out when I'm going to be teaching the sock class. Wednesdays from 1-3pm, starting July 11. In the Richmond Hill area? Wanna start knitting socks? Give the shop a call to sign up!

Just a simple knitting update

Self-patterning socks #3 for DH

Done! I finished them on Saturday morning while DH was at work, wrapped them up and gave them to him at the joint party for him and my mom that evening. Unfortunately, I have forgotten to take pictures of the finished project - stay tuned.

Muppet roadkill

I have turned the first corner on the edging!



I'm trying to get several edging repeats done a day so I can have a hope in hell of finishing this thing soon. Ideally, I'd like to have it ready for DD1's 'friends' birthday party in a few weeks.

Selbu Mittens

So I was looking for something to read while I took a soak in an epsom bath (anyone who's ever been postpartum will probably understand the purpose of that), and I pulled out Marcia Lewandowski's Folk Mittens. Browsing along, I came to the "Selbu Mittens"...and something snapped. I was consumed by a desire to make these mittens. I don't know why these mittens specifically. There are lots of absolutely gorgeous mittens in the book, yet I fixated on these.

So, Monday I started up on mitten #1, and by yesterday afternoon...



I had a mitten.

This is the back:



And this is a shot of the inside of the thumb:



I adore it. I am obsessed by it. I think it looks totally kick-ass. Unfortunately, I am less than enthused about making a mate for it - I gave into the craving to knit a Selbu mitten, and now that a Selbu mitten has been knitted, the craving is assuaged.

Fortunately, I have months to get over this Second Mitten Syndrome before the weather gets cold.

(Yep, the mittens will be for me. I also had DH try on the mitten so I could see how much I'd need to change up the pattern to make something to fit him. Turns out the length is fine on him, I just have to add some width.)