I... am a master of NOTHING.

Well, it was a nice thought, and maybe I didn't post again right away because I wanted to bask in the glory of two perfect swatches.

But it wasn't meant to be. Neither was right! The Mist swatch was right before washing, but it grew by about 2 stitches over 10 cm, which would make it too big. The St. Brigid swatch was sort of a disaster. That afternoon I must have been paying too much attention to the meeting and miscounted, because it was only 18 sts in 4", which isn't even close to 21.

So back to the swatching board, as it were. Mist was swatched, for the fifth time(!) on size 0s, and I got 24sts before washing, and 23 afterwards. I'm aiming for 22, so close enough! I can ease up a little bit and be fine, and if I'm still a little tight I should be able to take care of it in the blocking. One down.

St. Brigid swatching, however, has been less successful. I picked up some bamboo needles (Clover) in 3s and 4s and tried on the 3s, hoping it would be overkill. No such luck. I still got 18sts. I returned the needles and went looking for advice. I think I have three options, an dI'll take them in this order.

1. Use waxed paper (or an $6 can of wax) to make the turbos sticky.
   
2. Try size 2 Addi Naturas.
3. Try some other wood or bamboo needle, but not Crystal Palace, because I was unhappy wtih the join the only time I used them.
4. Give up on this yarn and try a lighter weight.

I'm hoping that I'll have better success with one of these methods. Does anyone have other suggestions?

And finally, the lingerie. I had to start over three times because I'd get to the end of a row and the pattern wouldn't line up, which meant that the mistake could have been in that row or the previous one. I finally put in markers, which helped a lot. I'm now on the last row of the edging and I'm ready to start the body. And now I'm wondering if I made a critical error. I have more hips than are allowed for in the pattern, by a whole size. So I figured I'd work the edge in the larger size and then decrease a repeat on each side toward the waist. And now I'm wondering what the decrease rate should be, whether the arrow I'll have to make by decreasing the repeats together will look funny, whether the regular size might just have been stretchy enough and I shouldn't have done this at all. I think for now I'll with it as planned, but I'll keep in mind a famous blue blog technique. I figure that if this doesn't work out, I can pick up a row of stitches, cut, and then work down to the end. I could even knit a separate edgind and graft it in, if I really have to. We'll see how it goes...

So that's the news for this week. I find that I'm really unmotivated to post when I can't take pictures, and I hope that hte good digital camera will be back next week. I'll be in Montreal for a meeting for most of the week, so hopefully I'll get a lot of knitting done and have something fun to show when I get back. I think I'll take the lingerie, my sock, and Mist. That should hold me for five days, right? Or should I take my Koigu hat, too? Decisions, decisions...

I am a swatching master!

If I'd written an entry this morning, I would have told you that I have start-itis. All this good stuff in the mail, and making up excuses for starting things I've already got! After Friday night's episode of not wanting to work on the sock, I really wanted to go back to Mist and swatch for St. Brigid. Yesterday afternoon an intern from work came over to learn to knit. While waiting for her to arrive, I started a new swatch for Mist (on the size 1 needles I got on Friday). My student would need to learn to cast on, so I figured I might as well cast on a new project as an example. I quickly swatched and cast on for my Koigu hat. I then decided that seeing techniques would work better in fat yarn on big needles, so I used some spare yarn to teach and worked on my hat while she was knitting. I did about 8 rounds of the hat while she worked. That's as far as I got on the hat.

While showing off an assortment of patterns, I remembered the lingerie! I got out the cone of Zephyr I had to start mine and wound it off, casting on that evening.

I went back to my Mist swatch while I watched a couple movies last night and was pleased ot find that I didn't make very many mistakes in the dark. Finished that off during a meeting this afternoon and was pleased to find that I finally got the right gauge! I'll wash and remeasure just to make sure, but I'm really excited!

There was more meeting to go, so I started the swatch for the St. Brigid. My mom's copy of the book had notes from when she'd made it. The book says to use 7's and mom's note said that she'd gotten slightly too big a guage with wooden 3's . I tried 4's and worked away, and first measurement says that this swatch (unwashed) is also perfect, at least for stitch gauge.

Yes! I am a swatching master! How often do you get two perfect swatches in one day? And the opportunity to start four new projects in one weekend? This may be a disaster waiting to happen.

I suspect that the hat, Marcel's sweater, and the baby blanket will go on hold while I get excited about my new stuff. (Go back a few days and look at the blanket patterns, and give me your opinion. I want someone to make a decision for me!) And here are my justifications.

• Hat: Koigu hat looks like it won't be as warm as my Silk Garden hat, so it can wait until it's warmer out.
• Marcel's sweater: I'm not really getting anything done on it anyway, and if I'm going to focus on cables, and if I'm going to work on a project that needs a lot of attention, I should work on mom's sweater.
• Baby Blanket: Baby is due in the summer, I have plenty of time, and I don't know which pattern to choose!

Time to go make wet swatches and see whether they stay perfect!

It came!

Ah, what a great feeling to get the email that says, "Package for you at the front desk!" And it was a big one, too! I don't have pictures today, but maybe Monday.

My big box had:

• two bags of Jaimieson's Soft Shetland wool in color Wilkinson,
  
• Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting,
  
• Debbie Bliss' Easy Knits,
  
• a set of US1 turbos, 32",
  
• a big row counter with lots of wheels,
  
• leftover raisins and currants from Christmas breads, and
  
• the cough syrup I didn't finish when I was home.
  

Well, some of those are more interesting than others. I wanted to run right home and play with my new toys, but it didn't seem like a good idea at 11am. In fact, I stayed at work all day, went to dinner with friends, and then hung out and played games at the house where I lived as an undergrad.

You'll note that none of the things in the box went together to make one project. The Jamieson's goes with the Starmore book to make St. Brigid for my mom, but not on US1's. Those are for Mist, but I didn't have that yarn with me. And you can't knit with currants. So I spent all evening working on my random sock, which, while a nice project, is not what I wanted to have in my hands. So now, home at (ugh) 2am, I'm all excited to knit with the new stuff, but I know that I'm too tired to do anything correctly. I probably couldn't even cast on right. But tomorrow can be a knitting day. In fact, the intern from work is coming over and we'll wind off her Manos and start to knit. She wants to make long armwarmers (we can learn stitch and row gauge, decreases, increases, gussets) with some sort of curving pattern down them (purling, maybe cables). It will make a great first project. Maybe we'll have tea and currant scones....

Update and Wait

It feels like there hasn't been much exciting in the past couple days. Probably because I'm so anxious about getting a box (more later) that it seems like I'm just knitting to pass the time before I can start The Next Big Project - St. Brigid.

Here are some update pictures. I tracked down the good camera, so I'll be able to take better pictures... in two weeks. I'm glad ot know that it's not lost, and it will make this camera bearable in the interim. (This camera, by the way, doesn't even have internal memory. You have to save the photos to a floppy disk. My new laptop (a month old) doesn't even have a floppy drive, so any photos I post have to be loaded up at work. And unfortunately, knitting isn't my boss's top priority. Rats.)

First, the baby blanket. I've continued to work on it until I need to make a decision about which pattern to choose, and, well, the time is now. Click on either thumbnail for a bigger view. On the closeup of the blue section you can sort of make out the diamond pattern. It doesn't show up as well as I'd originally hoped, but it's ok, and I'm hoping that it might come out a little better with some blocking. Or, as I fear, I'll find out that microfiber won't learn something new and it will always be like that.

So I'm at the point of decision. Alison liked the free form one, but hinted that the more symetric one might go better with the diamond pattern. Here are the two patterns, drawn out with the scroll patterns. I still haven't decided which I like better.

And finally, here's my random sock. I'm just using a die to tell me how often to yo k2tog (every Nth on the die) and then how many rows to knit plain. It's kinda fun, and it goes quickly.

"The yarn is in the mail."

The yarn for my mom's Christmas present, Alice Starmore's St. Brigid, is in the mail! Also the book with the pattern, another book, the needles I need to swatch (again) for Mist, and currents and raisins I was supposed to take home after Christmas. Oh, USPS, what have you done with my package? Please deliver it tomorrow! It probably should have been here by now, and I don't want to wait until Monday.

EEgor, my masterpiece! Eet ees feenished!

After five long months, I put on the facings (gotta love those accidental shots!), and now I present to you,

My Completed Berroco Jacket!

I wore it in my office all day. It's very comfortable and it's a nice weight. It's not quite warm enough for this time of year, but I think it will be excellent in the spring and summer when the air conditioning is on all the time.

Yaaaay!

The Next Great Adventure

I already have a lot on the needles (and the yarn for my mom's sweater is on the way), but I seem to have acquired a desire -- no, a NEED -- for Koigu. I bought four skeins in the past couple weeks and I've fallen in love with it. This weekend I also found a Schaefer yarn called Anne in a lovely colorway.

Koigu left, Anne right

What am I going to do with it all? The koigu is mostly destined for socks. The blue and purle one is for a hat, and the rose one will probably go to Fiesta Feet, maybe paired with a grey (white socks get so dirty). One of the others may go to "Swatch Your Step" socks from last summer's Knitters'. They're mitred squares and may be a mother-daughter knit along project. And the fourth? I don't know. I just thought, "I'll go to the yarn store and buy some Koigu..."

The Anne is destined to be a cabled baby sweater for friends who had a baby on Friday. I found a cabled baby sweater pattern with the right gauge, and I should have enough yarn (4 oz, 560 yds, 7-8 sts/in) to make a baby sweater. Today I bought Barbara Walker's A Treasury of Knitting Patterns which has some beautiful cable panels, and I'll put something together over the next weeks and start knitting. I'm excited to design something myself. I'm going to hope that I have enough to make a whole sweater, but if I'm running short I may do a vest. I'm thinking of doing button or snap shoulders in either case. I hope that this yarn works for this project. If not, hey, socks for me!

Whada you think?

It only took, well, about two hours, but I have a chart for the white squares. I started with a base desing of four swirls and then added four more. I had two ideas - one with straighter, even swirls,* and one with more freeform, curvier swirls.** You'll have to sort of imagine the borders being filled in a little bit better, and the colored line was for me to mark my border area for symetry with the other pattern. All of the marks are yarn overs, so it will be lacy.

Which do you prefer?

*Messing with the chart made some of the marks go away. Imagine that the "up" and "right" arms also have marks, evenly spaced like the "right" and "left" arms.

**There are a few missing marks here, too. They're in the swirl that comes out "straight" to the left and "straight" down. Imagine a few more dots in the middle of the arm, spaced evenly like the others in the row, but a touch lower, to give them the same curve as the "up" and "right" arms.

This may have been a mistake

Ok, I'm freely admitting that I might have just made a horrible decision in the baby blanket. When I find out at the end that it didn't work, I'll just refer back to my post, and tell myself from the past, "I told you so!"

I worked until I knew I was near the midpoint of the ball (where I'd been when I ripped it out the other day) and I got to the wide point of the diamonds. There was a lot of yarn enough, but I was pretty sure that I didn't have enough yarn to actually get through another diamond repeat. So I put in a lifeline here so that I could easily rip back if I need to. Then I carried on, forged ahead until I got to roughly the midpoint of the ball. Four rows short. Four of the longest rows in the pattern. Could I just keep going and hope for the best?

So here's the potentially critical mistake: Yes. This is what I figure. I don't have as good a scale now as I had when I measured the balls, and I chose the midpoint of the ball on the conservative side, so I should have a little more to go before I get to the true half. (Not that I have a clue where that really is, so this is cause A of the potential disaster.) Two, this was the smaller ball, so I should have some extra in the second ball to cover if I'm a little short on this one. But will I have enough? I have an extra gram in the second ball. (Cause B of the potential disaster.)

So when I get to the end of this square (keep in mind that then I'll also be halfway through two white squares and halfway through the blanket) I'll find out whether I'm home safe, or still in the disaster zone. Still I'm hoping for the best. This was only two weeks of work, and the baby's not due for 7 months, so I should have time to almost finish, be disgusted with myself, rip back, set it aside for a while until my fury subsides, and then try again and do it right. No problem. ;)

Yeah, sit back and laugh, and practice your best "I told you so!' tone of voice and face (mocking? sympathy? pity?) and, if appropriate, evil laugh. I'm ready. :)

Bye bye, baby (blanket)!

I seem to have had an unintended Rip-Along project. The baby blanket. I was working on it the other night and had made a pattern mistake, and in taking the row out twice I maybe dropped a stitch or two, so I took out a few more rows and it wasn't really getting any better. So I decided to just take it all out. It hadn't really taken that long to kit, so I didn't mind. And since I hadn't been happy with the pattern, I had a chance to change it. So out it went and I started over. I went back down to 8s (from 10s), widened the border between the increasing yo border, charted out bigger diamonds, and chose a different double decrease. So now I'm flying along on the new version, and I'm much happier with it. The pattern is apparent, the blanket won't be quite as loose for baby fingers, and everything is good. I'm probably about halfway back to where I was on Thursday (ready to add the white!), so it won't take long to gain back that ground. Yay!

The next baby blanket challenge will be what pattern to do in the white sections. I'm thinking of trying to do some sort of swirl or scroll of eyelets in those sections, hopefully to keep the whole blanket from being blocky. I have some ideas, and when I get to that point I'll know how many stitches I'll end up with, so I'll be able to chart it out and organize something that will work. I'm looking forward to doing this and tweaking the design. The idea I like best is kind of a pinwheel of curls (straight lines come out from the center and curl at the ends), but I figured out that it needs an odd number of pieces to look right, and I'm not sure how well I'll be able to chart that, but I'll mess around and see what I can figure out.

It's Saturday, and finally I don't have anywhere to be. I made french toast for breakfast, I have a pot of tea, a book, a ton of knitting projects, and almost two seasons of Alias on DVD. Maybe I'll marinate some chicken for dinner, and curl up in my cozy house. Of course, the deep freeze has passed, but now I can stay inside to make up for all of the cold trips to and from work this week!

(And maybe if I'm really ambitious, I'll weave some ends and put the facings on my Berocco jacket, so that maybe tomorrow I can take a FO to Knitsmiths!)

Knitting, or is the camera on drugs?

Well, the good camera is still AWOL, so I used the bad one. They're photos, and they might even look like photos of knitting projects. If you squint. Hard.

Here's my little blob of baby blanket. I'll show pictures first and then tell the story.

When it's stretched out, you can see that there really is a pattern in there. Right?! Click for the whole thing.

I'm not 100% thrilled with how this is going. I adapted a diamond pattern from one of the Treasury of Stitches books, but the pattern doesn't show up very well. I think the main reasons are that it's garter stitch, it's on big needles, and the microfiber yarn is slightly fuzzy and maybe takes away from the design. I could have gone down in needle size, but I think I'll like the size of the blanket this produces. The texture is still interesting, so even if all of my lovely diamonds don't come through, it should be ok. I'm hoping that blocking will help, but that might just be a dream.

A Tale of a Baby Blanket

When I was in Germany this fall I tried to find yarn in Berlin, with little success. I finally found the Kaufhaus (department store) and their yarn department. They had a mix of yarn, some I liked and some I didn't, and I fell for this microfiber. Not head-over-heels, but a strong attraction. I thought it would make a nice baby blanket, but I didn't know how much to get and I wasn't excited about most of the colors. I wanted to use multiple colors, though, and the three that matched best were light blue, light purple, and white. I took 100g of each and went merrily on my way.

When I got home and told my mom about the spoils of my trip, she told me that equal ammounts of three colors is always wrong. Hardly ever works. Oops. But it was too late to go even out my purchase, so I had to figure out what to do. I did some thinking.

The most basic three-color designs would be equal stripes or checks. They're ok, but not very exciting. And they'd require a swatch and calculations to figure out how big to make each piece, and who wants to do that?

I realized that if I wanted to make a square, I could knit on the bias in garter stitch, and maybe there was a way to not have to make area calculations. My next idea was to knit pieces of equal area, starting from the corner. When I ran out of color A, I'd move to color B. When I finished half of B (one ball), it would be time to decrease. When I finished B, on to C, and when I run out of C, I'm done! I wasn't sure how this would look, though, so I did the math (hi, I'm a geek!) and it came out like this. The lines wouldn't be as blocky, but the areas are about right. I decided that this wasn't going to work either.

Then I had another idea. What if I did checks in two of the colors and made a border with the third? Then it would go like this: Knit with A until half of one ball is gone, then decrease A and add the balls of B on the sides and increase with them. When that ball of A is gone, decrease the Bs and start the second ball of A. When the Bs are gone, decrease A. Then I'd get a square and could knit the border in C until I run out of yarn. No gauge swatch, just weighing the yarn until I'm halfway through the first (and lightest) skein. I had a good scale to use when I started at home, but now the finest thing I have is a postage scale with 1/10th oz precision, so I'll do my best with finding the midpoint.

So this is how I'm working it now. I chose a garter stitch lace pattern to add some interest (both for my knitting and the finished product). I feel like I should do a different stitch in the white portion, but I'm discouraged by this one and think occasional rows of yo k2tog would be too boring. Any suggestions?

Rrrrrrrrrrrip-it

I'm participating in Alison's Rip-Along. I was feelin' good, feelin' fine, until I brought the project to Knitsmiths on Sunday. This is the Poetry in Stitches Camisol that my mom made for me. The piece of $#@! camera doesn't do it any justice, but I promise you that it's divine. (My mom also picked out the cutest buttons. Button photo heavily doctored.)

I love this camisol, but it doesn't fit right -- never did. The pattern goes up to a 35" bust, and, well, I've got a little more than that. Mom added some short rows, but it just didn't work out. It was bulgy in the wrong places, too wide around the top, and too flary in the hips. And while I fully appreciate all of the effort that went into it, Mom told me to rip it out. Now that I knit, I can do it over again for myself! I'm actually quite excited about knitting it again. The yarn is fantasic, the pattern is cute, I'll get to learn more about short rows, and I'll get to do a ton of math to hope that it will all work out this time. This will be an adventure, not a tragedy!

I started unseaming on the T this morning. Maybe I'll make progress by morning.

Camera, Come Home!

Someone borrowed work's good digital camera for the holidays, and working with the ancient one that only saves to floppy disk has not inspired me to blog. And since my new laptop doesn't even have a floppy drive, I have to do any photo editting at work, preferably after hours. So maybe tomorrow I'll bring all of my works in for photo-and-tell and have something more fun for tomorrow.

Thank you for all of the compliments on Flashy Lace. It is warmer today (it got up to freezing!), but not warm enough for me to wear this sweater. It will sit snuggly in a drawer until spring, and then I may wear it every third day all season!

My berroco jacket is coming along! Alison, I'd hoped you'd be there yesterday so that you could razz me about not being done yet! I got the second sleeve in and all sewn up, so I'm ready to do the facings! Then there are just ends to weave. Maybe I'll weave most of the ends first so that when I'm done I'm really done.

I had to reswatch for the Rowan sweater. Double-checking the yarn label, I see that it's rather finer than the Rowan Felted Tweed called for, but I should still be able to get gauge. The pattern calls for US 5's, but this yarn says 3-3 1/2, presumably mm since it's Scandinavian. That's 2 1/2 - 4 in US sizes. I went down to a 2 and still was only at 20.5 of my requires 22 sts/in, but I'll remeasure my blocked swatch tonight and either cast on or call home and ask for some 1's. Do I hear moss stitch on 0's? Maybe it's time to swatch on dpns, lest I get some circular 1's and then have to ask for 0's later.

My project that's actually progressing is the baby blanket that I'm working on for an old friend's first baby. Once again I don't have time to tell the tale of planning this blanket, but maybe that can be a task for tomorrow. I'll feel more inspired when I do pictures. I'm glad to be making progress somewhere, though!

And finally, the swatch for Marcel's Sweater is crawling along. I'm starting to pick up the pattern a little faster, but if I'm not careful about what's tbl and what's not and what's cabled left vs. right, I'll just have a big mess on my hands. I didn't have a good time to make much progress this weekend.

Three nights of square dancing and finishing up grad school applications will take a lot from my knitting time this week, but I'll see what I can manage. And tomorrow, pictures of my rip-along project!

Thank you, Nancy Walsh!

Click for big!

Thank you, Nancy Walsh, for a great pattern! I am completely in love with this sweater. Whose bright idea was it for winter to creep in now? I can't wait until spring, when I can wear this a lot. It's super comfy and I think it looks great! Thank you, thank you!

Knitsmiths, it will be too cold for me to wear this sweater on Sunday, but I could bring it along and slip it on so that people could see it in person. What do you think?

Mist

Isn't that a great name for a sweater? I don't know if it's the right name for this sweater, but who cares, it's cute. Sorry about the lines from the scanner. I didn't know how to fix them and I got sick of rescanning, so this is as good as it gets.

I'm making it with a wool/silk tweed that I bought on sale at Strawberry Tree in Denver (thanks, Mom!). It's yummy. Here's the swatch in action.

Initial measurements imply that I should go down to 4's instead of the 5's the pattern called for (I knew this; the needles are acting as a bookmark for the pattern page), but I think I'll finish and block before I start over.

I'm going to the symphony tonight (not to sing, but on the other side of the hall). I really want to knit. It's quiet. It's not disruptive. It will keep me awake. It will make me less fidgetty during a 100-minute piece with no intermission. It will get funny (and probably disapproving) looks. It's a dilemma.

Letting it Go

Thank you for the sympathetic comments about the penguin scarves. I was pretty upset for a while, but I've decided to just let it go. Great hacks are always removed, so I should have expected it. I guess I'd hoped they'd last a little longer. The penguins have been packed up and we have our fountain back now, so there isn't a constant reminder. (That wasn't my fault! They were already scheduled to go home.) I've decided that I don't want the scarves back, though I did think they were adorable. I don't have anything else to do with them (too short for people, I don't have my stuffed animals out anymore), so I'm just trying to let it go. it's not my usual modus operandi, but it seems better. And no, mom, I'm not the building trouble maker! :) Only knitting friends and some coworkers know about the scarves, so (as far as I know) building management doesn't know that I'm the culprit. And this is the other reason I don't want to try to get the scarves back -- I don't know how to do that without revealing myself. So I'll enjoy my penguin pictures and be proud of my clever plot, even if the building wasn't impressed. Knowing that I won't be here next Christmas to see those naked little penguins is a little consolation. :)

New Knitting

So, moving along with my life, I've completed the Flashy Lace sweater! I need to weave in the ends, and then hopefully I can take some pictures tomorrow. It's really comfy and cute and I really like it. Of course, I won't really be able to wear it for months, but it was a fun, quick sweater that I know I'll enjoy for a long time.

So now I need something new! I went to play word games tonight and needed something relatively mindless, so I pulled out the new wool-silk tweed and the Rowan 26 to swatch for "Mist". (Pictures of that tomorrow, too.) I didn't look at the sweater very carefully when I fell in love with it, but now I see that the entire thing is... moss stitch. I'm not thrilled by the tediousness of it, but I do like getting into the rhythm of the stitch, and it's easy to put down and pick up between rounds of Boggle. (Note: If you read off your list of words first, you can knit while everyone else goes through their lists!) And if I can learn to purl without looking, it will be great for watching my first and second season DVDs of Alias. Perhaps that can be the new skill to acquire with this sweater.

There are two other things I'd like to get started on, but they take more focus. I'm really drawn to working on the baby blanket for my best friend, but it doesn't need to be done for seven months. Its design is a long story that I'm too tired to tell tonight (but I promise I'll do it when I start the blanket), and I'm excited to make it work, but it takes paying attention, row counting, and deciding what kind of double-decreases to use (both for aesthetics and so as to not skew the pattern). It's microfiber and so soft, and having a little blanket in my lap during this season would be lovely.

The other project is swatching for Marcel's Sweater from the winter Interweave Knits. (See, I talk about it all the time. Why aren't I more excited?) I tried swatching for it at home, and I don't know whether it's the cables (come on, only one stitch - how hard can they be?), the twisted stitches (hello, back loop, also shouldn't be a problem!), or the yarn I was using (Taj Mahal - 70% extrafine merino, 22% silk, 8% chashmere - scrumptious but slippery, even on (blech) bamboo needles), but it didn't go well. I did maybe four rows and then gave up. My mom gave me a skein of Maulbeerseide-Schurwolle(mulberry silk*-new wool, 50/50) from Horstia, which is beautiful and should have awesome stitch definition and has fabulous colors . I think that, like the Rowan sweater I tried to start early this fall (in Berocco Linet instead of the cotton it was written for) and couldn't get gauge or a good fabric, I can become easily frustrated when swatching doesn't seem productive. Maybe I can let this sit for a week or so and then pick it up and try again. The pattern will take a lot more paying attention than I'd originally anticipated, and while I don't have a problem with doing complicated knitting, I know that I need to do it in the right time and place.

It should be bedtime, but there's a cat in my lap. Alias is in the DVD player and I have all the necessary remotes. Hmmm...***

* Mullbeerseide comes from caterpillars feed on mullberry leaves. The butterflies are recognized by their grey-white wings with fine brown lines. Maulbeerseide is as opposed to** Wildseide (wild silk), which comes from Tussahspinner, which are caterpillars that that come from India. The wild silk is of a lesser quality than the Mullbeerseide and is more likely to have burls and irregularities. I figured this out from a German textile website (starting here) and liberal help from my favorite online German dictionary, dict.leo.org. Ah, the power of the Internet. So here's something I don't understand, although I can literally translate it. "The [wild silk caterpillars] belong to the family of "night peacock eyes" (Nachtpfauenaugen). What does that mean? Is this a particular type of butterflies that I would know all about if I were a butterfly geek?

***My, I do ramble on, don't I?

Penguin Update

Unfortunately, the building management was not receptive to penguin scarves. They have been "removed." The concierge said, "They've been... well, they've been removed. The person who put them there probably should have asked the management first." Well, bah humbug to them, too!

Oh my, what happened in the lobby?

During the holiday season, the fountain in the lobby of my building is turned into a little winter scene. Aww, isn't it cute?

But don't those penguins look chilly? I've thought for several weeks that perhaps they needed scarves. I was surprised that the scene was still up when I returned from vacation last Friday, so I decided that I had to get moving before the penguins went to hibernate. And then I found this on the bulletin board in the kitchen. It was drawn by the concierge for the building (quite a good self-portrait). Now I knew the penguins needed scarves, and one design was already set!

I left work a wee bit early and bought some wool, and spent a couple days knitting. I think they look much happier now.

All of the penguins have different scarves. The red and white
one is K2P2 rib. The blue one is one repeat of feather and fan. The three-color one is garter stitch the long way, so that I didn't have to pay attention while I knit it. And I left a note, so that the scarves can be well-cared for.

This was a pretty good weekend project, my own personal little hack (though I didn't really follow the code of ethics since I just told you all about it).

In other knitting news, I finished sewing one sleeve into my Berocco jacket, so one to go, weaving ends, and doing the facings. It's inching toward completeness! Flash Lace's second sleeve is at about 10.5" of 15", so that, too, is nearing completion. I need some US5 dpns to finish it off, though. Or maybe I can put up with one of my bent circular needles. Maybe I can pick up the mittens again soon, but I haven't felt very inspired by them lately. I'll probably do the baby blanket instead, and try swatching for the Marcel's Sweater, too. All while watching too much Alias (first two seasons on DVD!) and taking an intensive C2 square dance class. Is it naptime yet?

Home again, home again

Well, I wasn't ready to come back home, but the calendar said it was time, so here I am.

I gave my mom the best Christmas present ever! I told her that I would knit her a St. Brigid sweater by Alice Starmore. She was so happy, she cried! My mom made this sweater for me when I was in college and knit one for one of my coworkers. She's always wanted one and has been frustrated that she's knit the thing twice but doesn't get to wear it, so I knew it would be a hit. She's going to order the yarn and then I'll start on it right away.

And then she got what really is the best Christmas present ever. His name is Max.

He plays hard and sleeps hard. He likes people, and if his toy rolls too far away he brings it back so that he can be closer to you. Sometimes he naps on the tree skirt, but when he wakes up a little bit, he'll come sit on the couch with you and go back to sleep. He'd climb up on my chest and rub my face and knead and lick my lopi sweater. He sleeps all night in bed with my mom, snuggled up next to her. He's a perfect kitty.

We decided that he needed a mouse, so I knit him a mouse with bobble ears with Lopi Lite leftover from my sweater. He loved it!

(I made a braided tail, but the yarn pulled apart, which is why he has no tail now. Didn't seem to bother the cat any. :)

Mom's older boy cat wanted to play a little, too, so I made him his own mouse, but he seems to only want what the baby has. They play together a lot now, and he doesn't seem to mind too much that the baby stalks him. The older female cat is not happy about the kitten, but hopefully the household will settle down soon.

So most of my vacation was spent being sick and playing with the kitten. And, of course, knitting. (Note that there are only kitten pictures, not knititng pictures.) I should have finished my jacket, but I didn't feel like working on it. However, I made good progress on the Flashy Lace sweater and I'm about a third of the way down the second arm. I sketched and tried out some patterns for a baby blanket for my best friend and eventually sort of settled on something, so I'll do more sketching and then try to get moving on that. I tried swatching for Marcel's Sweater from the last Interweave Knits in Taj Mahal, but it didn't go so well. I have another yarn to try, and maybe it will work better. The pattern is a lot harder than I expected when I first glanced at it. It's mainly twisted stitches and 1 st-cross cables, which were very slippery in the Taj Mahal. We'll see how the other yarn works. I also cast on for a pair of socks on the way home, but it's a highly variegated yarn and I'm not sure how to add some texture that I'll like (and no slip stitches -- I'm still sick of them). Maybe I'll find something in a book. Maybe I should have brought more books home.

I did bring home a lot of yarn. Tons for socks, which sounds fun when I think I want socks, but maybe I want more big projects. I bought some beautiful wool-slik tweed to make a jacket/sweater from a Rowan magazine, so I might start that... well, after all that stuff I just described. I'll post pictures tomorrow.

Last night I made a quick trip to Woolcott to buy some Cascade to make penguin scarves. Pictures and the story tomorrow...