This is the shawl...

...that took first place in the Sheep to Shawl contest at the Wool Market in Estes Park, CO last weekend.

This is Deb, who wove the shawl that took first place in the Sheep to Shawl contest at the Wool Market in Estes Park, CO last weekend.

This is Di, who plyed the yarn that Deb wove into the shawl that took first place in the Sheep to Shawl contest at the Wool Market in Estes Park, CO last weekend.

These are Judy, Rebecca, and Nancy, who spun the singles that Di plyed into yarn that Deb used to weave the shawl that took first place in the Sheep to Shawl contest at the Wool Market in Estes Park, CO last weekend.

This is Myrtle, who raised the sheep that gave the fleece that Judy, Rebecca, and Nancy, spun into the singles that Di plyed into yarn that Deb used to weave the shawl that took first place in the Sheep to Shawl contest at the Wool Market in Estes Park, CO last weekend.

(Sorry, I don't have pictures of the sheep!)

Will it be another week?

I wanted to be the first to post sheep-to-shawl photos, but I put down the card reader somewhere and it will be MIA until tonight.

My grandfather is back in the hospital; hopefully everything will be ok. I'll probably go visit tomorrow.

I got to work this morning and discovered that we didn't record the data from one instrument that ran all weekend, and the computer running the other two instruments had logged out sometime over the weekend. Don't know how much data we lost there. Good thing it's only a trial run!

My Rowan sampler sweater might be a few inches too small. I'll try to block the body wide tonight and hope for the best.

I'm glad I finished my presentation for today on Saturday instead of leaving a little to do... It probaby would have been a disaster!

Hopefully pictures and fun stuff tomorrow.

It's been a week

Not a week since I posted; I know it's been longer than that. More like, "How've you been?"

"It's been a week."

The gloves class was fabulous, but it was awfully hard to be up so early. Saturday after class we went to go visit my grandfather in the hospital for his annual we-think-it's-pancreatitis-but-we-don't-really-know-what's-happening visit. My mom went again on Monday but I needed to stay at school. Thuesday and Wednesday must have been days we tried to recover, and Thursday was back at the hospital. Friday I had dinner with an old friend, her husband and her two charming children. Anyone have a chart for a firetruck sweater? Saturday was back in the hospital and Sunday was catching up for the store. Thankfully, my grandfather went home yesterday, so that's a big stress that's been removed.

Hopefully I'll have my camera back soon and I can update some photos. Here's the status of some projects:

• Sanquhar gloves: thumb and index finger "complete", working on middle finger. I'll finish the tips when all the fingers are done to tr to get the best fit.
• Rowan sweater: back and front are complete, one sleeve is about half finished. I really want to wear this, so I've been trying to make some progress.
• Rogue: Did I mention that I'm starting Rogue? After a couple of false starts because I wasn't reading the directions (twisted it, didn't start the cable after the turning row, made it skew when I knitted up the hem...) it's going well now. I'm at the waist.
• Socks for mom: Knit in class to complete the leg. Spent two days looking for the missing dpn, found it in the other socks I've been working on.

  It's been a week.

  Posted by sesamest at 08:08 AM | Comments (1)

Mother-Daughter Knitting Class

I was going to be so clever, posting this entry from school, putting up the picture... that's on my other machine. I got a new laptop for research (pumped with memory and disk space for insense computational analysis) so I'm not bringing my personal machine anymore. And that's the one with the pictures, of course. I'll add the pictures when I get home tonight.

This weekend my mom and I are going to take a class from Beth Brown-Reinsel at LYS A Knitted Peace in Littleton, CO. My mom and a friend of hers took a class on aran design from Beth last year and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. I'll be joining them this year for Sanquhar gloves. These fair isle gloves were originally knit in the burgh of Sanquhar, Scotland. I read a lot of history about them from the Sanquhar Tollbooth Museum website last week. The museum has many gloves on display with a variety of traditional patterns. No pictures of these on the website, though. Road trip, anyone?

My mom has already knit these gloves in blue and white Zephyr on 000 needles! She loved Beth's class and wanted to take a class with me so much that she's going to take the class anyway. :) Our homework was to swatch to get 9-11 st/in in a 1x1 fair isle check with our selected yarn and then knit 1.5" of corrogated ribbing.

(What's six hours between friends?)

After several failures in experiments with contrast, I chose Lorna's Laces Shepard Sock Georgetown with an off-white Lang for the other color. I think they're going to very pretty, but also subtle. I, um, forgot to take pictures of mom's cuff, but it's also very pretty. Maybe we can make a scan tonight and add that in.

The biggest challenge for this class? My first fair isle on dpns? Finding colors that have enough, but not too much, contrast? Suffering the anticipation of a fabulous class and beautiful gloves? Overcoming second-glove syndrome?

No -- getting up early enough to drive an hour to be at class at 9!

Stringin' Out the Blog Fodder

There's actally a lot to blog about, but since I only have my camera on occassion, I have to mete out what I've got. (This is why I haven't posted in a week!) So today's entry will be the Rowan Samper Sweater.

or Who needs to follow directions?

I fell in love with Berocco's Linet the first time I went to Colorful Stitches in Lenox, MA. I loved the colors and couldn't choose just one, so I needed to find a pattern that would use several. I chose the Rowan pattern in the picture. It's from the early 90's, cost me $2.40, and uses a long-ago-discontinued Rowan cotton. Who needs to use the yarn in the pattern? Substitution number 1! (The gauge for the Linet is a little bit finer than for the cotton, so I'm making one of the larger sizes.)

Ok, so I'm doing the same stitches that are in the patterns. The green is a 5-stitch basketweave, cream is a psso pattern, purple is little triangles, and blue has 2x2 purl squares. I love the little patterns, but I get bored knitting some of them. Maybe just the ones that have whole rows of purl. ;)

The pattern is writen as a big, mid-90's, drop-shoulder -- a style that's not so flattering, really. So I whipped out Ann Budd's Sweater Pattern book, looked up my gauge, and made it into a set-in sleeve style. Substitution number 2! I think this will look much nicer and I'll be happier to wear it. I had just started the blue portion of the front when I took the picture yesterday, so I'll be on to the sleeves soon.

Well, that's today's update. More tomorrow. (Which might be Friday, since it's now almost Thursday...)