Obsession du Jour

Once in a while

Every so often, there is still an occasional crafty venture here at Chez Obsession, and today I thought I'd see if I could scrounge a few of the current projects together.

I actually didn't realize how much knitting I got done on the T until I stopped riding the rails in favor of the scooter.  The train portion of my commute (bus knitting = car sick = bad news) was pretty short - 15 mins or so of effective knitting time, but half an hour or so a day, 5 days a week apparently adds up, because without it, I'm kinda dead in the water.  That means that these:

Jaywalkers in Socks That Rock 'Carbon'

...which were my train knitting for a while, are going sloooooowly.  But they're getting there, just a few more rounds to the toe decreases on sock #2 and then BAM, new socks.  The first new handknit socks in well over a year, I think.

I did finish these earlier this year, and have an inordinate love for them. 

They're the ever-popular Fetching pattern, altered just a tiny bit and knit out of my beloved Roy handspun.  I know, I was determined to make socks out of him, but the yarn just wasn't going to be happy on my feet, and we all know that you must listen to what the yarn tells you.  These are fantastic and cozy, and just rustic enough that they knock the 'girlie' edge off the pattern for me.  Mr. ODJ likes these so much that he steals them constantly, so next up is a pair of Dashings for him out of the other sock's worth of this yarn.  Here's how they're going so far:

Heh.  Maybe for NEXT winter.

Look! Knitting!

Hey, something changed since yesterday!

I started knitting something new!  Wheee! 

Knowing that I was probably behind on my knitting mag viewing, Elisa sent me this link  http://www.magknits.com/Nov07/patterns/seaweed.htm the other day, bless her.  Here's the picture:

It really struck a chord for me as it gets colder here in Boston and I still want to traipse all over my little city with a baby strapped into my current favorite carrier.  It's our main way to get back and forth to daycare, for instance, so it's a daily issue for us.  I thought this idea was a simple, cleverly designed, easily customizable solution to the 'baby wearing coat' thing.  And?  Bulky yarn!  Fast!  Easy to knit!  Very little counting!

After thinking about it for a couple of days, in my cloudy, sleep-deprived way, I realized that I had the perfect yarn for this already in my stash.  Actually, yarn lying dormant in a dead WIP that I hadn't been able to let go of yet.  Sold!  Match made in heaven, even.

After WB's bedtime last night I pulled out my winter coat, a tape measure, and the wool, and went to work.  Ten minutes later I had a plan, and 20 minutes after that I had an inch of knitting.

And then it was bedtime.  Confession, it was 10:30, which is actually 30 minutes past MY bedtime these days, so I stayed up past my bedtime to knit.  It's wild times here at Chez Obsession. 

Half-way there

This is the 20-week belly, and in theory marks the halfway point in this little adventure.  Suddenly, there's no escaping the fact that I look pretty damned pregnant. For comparison, here's 14 weeks, same shot, same clothes, etc. Fun, huh?

I'd also like to thank everyone for their responses to that last post.  If you haven't gone back and read through the responses, you should.  There have been so many fantastic ideas and fun stories.  I'm almost caught up responding to these, though I still have a few to go, but there have been many wonderful conversations spawned, and I thank you all for taking the time to throw out your own widely varied experiences and thoughts.   Also, several people here and elsewhere have mentioned signing with their youngsters and I'm completely intrigued.  I've been astonished by just how much has been written about this, so I'll throw out another question for y'all.  If anyone out there who's been signing with their little ones has a favorite book/resource, I'd love to hear about it. 

Meanwhile, here's the most recent project in the weebeastie knitting:

You know the bee booties are next, right?  Right after I finish The Great Swatch Project of 2007.

Some stuff for some people, pt 2.

For Elisa:

See how badly you are kicking my ass?  Not that we're racing or anything, but still.  This is where I was on Tuesday, after a complete rip-out and re-knit last week.  Don't ask, just know that one should not knit lace when one is so tired that one might fall asleep mid-stitch, putting one's entire lace shawl at risk.  Lessons for life.

But just look at the pretty yarn.....

Pattern: Miriam's Icarus shawl.  IK Summer 2006.
Yarn: Misti Alpaca in Maize (Why they are calling this Maize, I'll never understand.  This color looks no more like an ear of corn than does...say...my red hair.  What it SHOULD be called is key lime, but whatever rocks their boat.  The picture on the web page is actually a pretty good color representation.)

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For Juno and Kristen:

Remember these?  Best damned $5 EVAH.  Can't.Stop.Wearing.These.  Even when maybe I shouldn't.  Like, possibly this day - with olive green socks and red pants.  (Hush up Elisa, I can HEAR you rolling your eyes at this.)

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For Kristen:

Leon said to tell you that he misses you and that you should come for a visit the next time you're in the neighborhood.   He would have had me post a picture of the back-flip-belly-exposing-cute-you-to-death pose, but he din't think the rest of us could handle it.

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For Mick:

I can't compete with your giant yard, but I CAN design a cute mini-cottage garden, if I do say so myself.  Now if only I could figure out what to put in the back....

Sadly, no cockle shells.  Just cocoa shells.

I do hereby designate....

...this summer as the 'Summer of Spinning' here at Chez Obsession.

It's not that there won't be any knitting -- ha, as if! There's a whole series of sock experiments going on, so I guess you could actually call it the 'Summer of Spinning & Socks'. At any rate, the focus will very much be on fiber, fiber prep, spinning, etc.  Why?  Because I am drowning in fiber and fleeces here!  Mind you, I'm not in any way complaining (truthfully, it makes me embarrassingly giddy), just stating a fact.  I think we've proven that I can stockpile wool pretty much anything fiber. Now it's time to see if I can actually DO something with it. In the next few days I'm going to put together an inventory and get it listed here so that there's nowhere to run. 

Meanwhile, here's a couple of sample skeins from some of this season's purchases:
Remember the Spinner's Hill Hot Rod?

Fresh singles showing a good full range of Lisa's colors.

And here's the rest of the test spin, Navajo plied.

At New Hampshire this year, out of curiosity, I picked up a couple of ounces of a merino/tencel blend from The Sheep Shed in the colorway 'Bermuda':

Verdict: It's a little annoyingly sticky on the draft, and maybe it's a fiber best spun sober (what?  just let it be a leson to you, that's all I'm saying), but it has a very lovely sheen and drape and seems like it would knit up into a lovely fabric.

In general, I also tend to like richer, deeper colors than I normally see in this blend.  Is that just current dyeing fashion for this stuff, or is there something about the fiber properties of the tencel that makes it harder to get the rich colors?   Anyone?

Feast or famine.

So.....yeah....it's definitely feast or famine around here.  I've been given a short lunch break by the Construction-Master in the midst of hanging these:

,
along with painting and installing quarter-round along the living room floor, stripping some of the woodwork in the hallway, running all new wiring for the floor outlets (ha!  you thought the great wiring adventure would be LONG finished by now, didn't you?) on the first floor, washing a month's worth of laundry, and cleaning a month's worth of neglect in the house.  These last two seem especially important to me because we have company coming next weekend, and while I am not what one might call 'anal retentive' regarding housekeeping (thanks to 3 years of living with 6 graduate student males in one house, before that I was a nightmare), I do still feel the need to scrape the Spaghetti-O's off the stove and vaccum the cat hair off the floor from time to time.  Figuratively speaking, of course.  We would never eat Spaghetti-O's in this house, much less leave bits to dry on the stove for days/weeks.  Ahem.   Also, there's been some weeding of the garden, which is settling in nicely for the most part.  I think we're going to lose one of our transplants, a 'Multi-Blue' Clematis, but everyone else seems pretty happy.  Like this Echinacea:

Echinacea 'Sunset' loving this sunshine.

Since my disappearance, some stuff has happened, there's been some traveling (updates to come), and there's even been a teeny bit of actual knitting/spinning/blog-type activity(ditto).  Not much, but some.  We'll start with the newest family member and her adventures with an old friend, Nadine .

Lucy and Nadine.

Oh yeah, she says her name is Lucy.  I'll admit that I tried to talk her into Lucretia, but she's having none of that sort of frilly name stuff, so I guess Lucy it is.   

The three of us have spent some time getting to know one another, because me?  Completely unfamiliar with the world of double-drive spinning, not to mention the speed with which a wheel this size will spin up fiber.  Folks, they don't call this a 'production wheel' for nothing. Fast drafting and good fiber control are key, apparently.  By the end of the bobbin nadine looked like this:

I think Lucy and I have come to a basic understanding of one another.  Next we'll try plying some of this, but before we did that, I decided that I needed a wrist distaff, so I ran a little bit back through to increase the twist even more and made this:

I used the examples in 'A Handspindle Treasury' (thanks again Santa), and oh my, my, how I love this thing!  Lookit!

Stunningly beautiful Hello Yarn hand painted roving from the Maine Fiber Frolic (what? I said there was travelling.) and the newest drop spindle in the stable, a Bosworth in Tulipwood from New Hampshire S&W. 

Can I say? SO MUCH BETTER to have a distaff for the handspindling.  Call me uncoordinated (and I am), but my enjoyment level of the drop spindle, which has always been mitigated by the fiber control issues, has just skyrocketed.  If you think you don't like handspindling, I'd like to suggest trying this before you completely dismiss this particular outlet for your spinning addiction habit hobby.  It bears mentioning here that plenty of folks have said the distaff was important equipment in the past, but I sort of always thought that just wrapping the fiber around my wrist was good enough, especially given that one of the joys of handspindling is the distinct lack of necessary equipment to tote around.  Who me?  'I don't need no stinking crutch'.  Foot?  Meet mouth.  Mouth? Meet foot.  Yeah.  So.Wrong.

Here are some links to other wrist distaff photos, but Urbanspinner's site with instructions for these seems to be down (temporarily?  permanently?):
Woolflowers
Notsoswift
Tessa
Fibernut

Spinoff Summer 2005 also had instructions for making a wrist distaff using an interesting technique.

Ooops...breaktime's over. Hear that whip crackin'?  Gotta go!  More stuff to show you!  Dang! I'll try to sneak away later.....

Cry me a River

The River Shawl/Stole.  *Sigh*  What a rocky relationship we've had, she and I.  Let's recap:

Mid-August:  New Rowan comes out, and I fall in love with this stole even though not only have I not ever knit lace, I don't even WEAR lace - or, for that matter, mohair. Not kidding.  So I mostly just keep thinking it's cool, but try to ignore it....but I do start looking at laceweight yarn for the first time ever.  Just out of curiosity.  You understand, of course.

Two days later: Jody starts up a knit-along. I order some laceweight yarn.  Not because I'm going to knit this, no way. I don't wear lace, remember? I just want to play around with some laceweight yarn.  Turns out that I've never had any laceweight yarn, that there isn't any laceweight in my stash.  None.  Must have some laceweight. Must.Buy.Yarn. 

I can stop anytime I want, yes I can.

A week after that, the first yarn arrives. You know what happens next, right?  Right.  I immediately start to cast on for this thing.  I say "start", because it doesn't go very well. 

A week later, I'm in pretty good shape, but having some trouble.  Not only did I have to try every single type of needle I own before having to go out and buy brand new straight bamboo needles, I don't like the way it looks.  Ten or so rows in and I can't really discern the pattern, but I've been warned about this, so I forge ahead.

A week (and several repeats) later, and I have to frog the whole damned thing because, well, I'm still an idiot.  Charted lace & football?  Not so good together if you're a dumb ass.  Charted lace, football, AND Magners?  At a bar? An exceptionally bad idea.  But you already knew that, didn't you?

THREE weeks later:  TONS of people have finished their shawls, and they're all awesome.....and mine looks NOTHING like theirs.  I'm about a third of the way through, with maybe 4 or 5 repeats completed, but now, not only am I still really unhappy with the way it looks, when I stretch it out, I can STILL barely see the pattern.  I'm sad.  I assume that I've somehow screwed it up and that I'm just not cut out for lace knitting. The shawl goes into time out.  I shamelessly start to knit other things - like a lace scarf just to prove to myself that I CAN knit lace, nyah, nyah - and ignore it for a while.  Then, miraculously, while reading Jody's blog on the topic, I realize that she's gone down to a MUCH smaller needle (she's also using this same yarn) and hers looks fantastic!   So, yeah...riiiiiiip.  And THIS is what it looked like at the end of October.  Those are my size 9 rosewood needles, one of the few sets of straight needles I own.  Things were so promising this day, but it was simply not to be.  Again with the needles\yarn disagreement (too sticky) and River goes back into time out. 

Score:

Shawl: 4

Knitter: 0

And here we are today:

Yes, it is possible that we have been saved.  New Brittany's size 9's at Rhinebeck combined with the firm belief that one can never have too many active knitting projects have resurrected her.  I'm only a few of repeats in now, but I can already tell a HUGE difference.  There's actually a pattern here, not some random collection of ginormous holes connected by yarn.  It's VERY exciting!

Hooray!

Not quite a summer knit.

So here it is, Halloween, and we got about half an inch of snow Saturday in the first snowfall of the season.  I can't decide why I'm not as giddy about that as I usually am, loving winter as much as I do, but in a desperate attempt to hang on to the last vestiges of summer/fall, I present:

The Diary of a "F"'ed up Summer knit, starring one VERY large cotton tank:

This week's guest star: Betty the Body. 

That's Josie prowling around back there.  The body suit freaks her out pretty good.  This was just after she spent several minutes crouched in the corner growling at it, but before she attacked it. Leon, on the other hand, is entirely unphased by Betty.  If you don't have arms to hold him, a lap for him to sit on, or hands to feed/pet him, you pretty much don't exist in his world.

Getting back to the main story, though, Betty is my body-double and does all the stand-in's for unpleasant fitting tasks, protecting me from stray pins and boredom.  Here's what she looks like in the cotton tank:

This just barely gives you the idea of it's size by showing how it just hangs there on her like a big grocery sack.  From the side, she looks about 8 months pregnant because of the way this thing 'tents' out in front.  Here, see for  yourself:

And then there's this one:

Even with me holding the side out like this, it's difficult to illustrate just exactly how large this freaking thing is.  I kid you not, there's about 4 INCHES of extra fabric in places.  The only good way to show this, I think, is to show you the basted version:

The red yarn is just about where I think the seams SHOULD be. For scale, know that at the armpit, that yarn is 1 3/4 inches in from the edge of the knitting.  One would think that my addiction to swatching would have protected me from this outcome, but alas, as so many before me have pointed out, swatches lie.  They do, the cheating bastards.  There were so very many ways in which I did not follow Claudia's Top Ten , starting right off the bat with #10.  I would have done well to heed #7 too, because I knew something seemed 'off', but since the majority of this tank was knitted either in a car or on a plane over a long road trip, well (hence the failure to follow #10), I just ignored it.  The knitting gods, you see, they have no mercy if one flagrantly flaunts the rules.

My plan this evening is to grab myself a bottle of wine and some leftover candy (the best part about Halloween), and then introduce this little twerp of a tank top to...you guessed it...the sewing machine.  I've never done this sort of thing before, this taking a machine to my knits,  and it's freaking me out a little.  But there's no way I'm ever going to rip and re-knit this cotton, especially after the pain the cotton caused me, so a sewing machine and some scissors it is.

Does anyone have any technique advice they want to share?   

The ADD Knitter's Hall of Shame

Or, why I should not be allowed to go two weeks or more without having to justify my knitting progress to the internets.

This is a current pictorial of all of the items currently in the WIP basket.  I was going to spend a whole bunch of time writing out a bunch of bullshit justifying why there are so many things currently on my needles, but instead, I'll just update you.  Once you've looked through here, familiarize yourself with the "planned obsessions" and "possible obsessions" albums over there on the sidebar.  Then consider please that I'm working an average of 60+ hours a week, and have been for quite some time.  And let's not forget the renovations I'm supposed to be helping with.   You do the math.  Uh huh.  I laughed too.

 

River: Starting over with these Size 9 Rosewood needles.

Eric the Red: Rick's sweater - still on sleeve island.  Must start 2nd sleeve soon and get this done before the first cold snap.

Craptastic Tequila Sunrise Scarf: Some of you may recognize this as the $1 yarn that you can find now at your local Target stores. I didn't bother with the unfinished lumber they were selling as knitting needles or any of the books, but there's no way I was going to pass up the cheapass novelty yarn.  So I'm stranding together one skein of the "flag yarn" and one skein of the fun fur in a simple drop stitch pattern.   For a $2 scarf, I've gotta tell you, It ain't bad.  God knows you can spend a hell of a lot more on similar yarns and get a much more expensive scarf that looks and feels pretty much the same.  That said, I'm unlikely to ever finish this because I hate knitting with this kind of yarn.  It drives me BATTY!  Two Buck Chuck is a far better use of that $2 in my book. 

Socks: For ME!  Super-fast worsted (yay 5 sts/in. !) Cascade Superwash. Yummy-soft, yummy-thick, yummy-scrunchy, yummy-washable.  Just sayin'.

D Bliss cable raglan sweater:  This is sleeve one, perched in the doorway of raglan decreases.  Sleeve two still to be done, then it's all about the seaming.

Gator socks:  for Rick.  This is sock #1 and this was it's progress at the end of this week's game.  It would have gotten farther if I had spent less time shaking my fist and making foul gestures at the TV.  Um, yeah, there was also some cussing, but that in and of itself would not have slowed the progress on the socks.  So much for these being his "lucky game day socks". Oh, and Alabama can kiss my ass.

Conwy socks:  For me. Um, yeah, unchanged since the weekend of July 4th.  Pathetic.  Who knew that I would be unable to convince myself to follow a pattern (much less a pattern with a chart, fer crissakes) for socks? 

Cashmereno (KFI) Shrug: For me.  No pattern, just following the basic Hourglass Sweater sleeve, then knitting flat across the back with a seed stitch edging, then re-joining for sleeve two. This got some much needed attention over the weekend, and I'm now up to about 3-4 inches across the back.

Scarf: For ? Probably me, because I'm selfish that way.  When River went into the freezer, I was apparently bereft at the loss of a lace project, so I picked out a stitch pattern called "Gothic Arches" from "The Big Book of Stitches", charted out a pattern (first charting on my own, wheee), grabbed some "Baby Cashmere"(Elann), and went to it.  Just to recap, Cornflower blue.Gothic.Cashmere.  Er.....OK, so maybe I did actually design this FOR me.  Christmas?  What's Christmas?

OK, now, this next one is not for hobby-monogymous among you.  If crochet, or acrylic yarns, or heinous color combinations disgust you, you can move along.  This is the last one, and contains no knitting whatsoever.  None. 

Gator lap throw for my Sister-in-law.  Designed for the maximum abuse that only a stadium full of college students, beer and football can dish out.  There's a LOT to be said for machine washable, and you just can't get these colors in nature.  This is three of the five strips to be made, and is a very old project that I had COMPLETELY forgotten about until it was unearthed recently in a box. The 4th and 5th blue center strips are also done and only need the orange and black borders.   Doesn't this make you wish YOU were a part of the "GatorNation"? 

Oh, and Alabama?  You can still kiss my ass.

This is not a shawl

This....is a River.

Ha. Not so complete, eh?  After a few repeats, I decided that the size 10 1/2 needles, while probably fine for the Kid Silk Haze, was entirely too large for this Alpaca Cloud.  At first I thought that it was just because I'm new to lace knitting that I couldn't really get a feel for the look of the pattern, but after a few repeats I realized that it wasn't me, there really wasn't a pattern to see because ALL the holes were too darned big.   I wish I'd thought to take a picture before ripping it out, but I was just so...well....let's just say that I've been a bit tired and on edge and leave it at that, shall we?  It's not the yarn's fault, or the shawl's fault, or even the needle's fault really, and I certainly didn't mean to throw them, but it might have happened.  Plus, I COULD have swatched, right?  But who swatches for a shawl? No one, not even me.  Have I mentioned that I love swatching?  I do, I love the swatch.  Remind me to show you the swatch box some day.   La, la,la...huh? Oh yeah - getting back to River. I'm hoping to cast on AGAIN this weekend, and I'm thinking about dropping to size 9's.  Jody went to size 7's, though, and she's using the same yarn.....hmmm.....what to do, what to do?