Bunny sweater progress

But first, I'm so happy that Cass likes her socks! They were fun to knit and I like that they look more complicated than they really are. And they look like they fit well, too. Hurray!

I've finished the front of the bunny sweater. This is really my first intarsia project, and it shows a little. The right side of the bunny face has vertical bars between the green and white stitches which might have been caused by picking up the strands in the wrong direction or could be poor tension (though I'm not sure in which direction). The inside of the ears should be pink, but when I knit with that the tension was worse, so I ripped back and I'll duplicate stitch the pink later. Even now, though, the ear on the left has a little pinch where I stranded the green behind it. I will use the standard knitting get-out: "Hopefully it will block out." Wish me luck.

(The pink spots on the bunny face that look like eerie eyes are actually bunny cheeks. Eyes and mouth outline will be embroidered later.)

Also a little bit of a new challenge was doing the fair isle back-and-forth at the top and not in the round. It wasn't bad, really. My purl with the British method is extremely awkward, but certainly passable. The knitting looks fairly even, so it should be ok. Hopefully it won't need to rely on the miracle of blocking!

Now I'm starting on the back, which has no bunny and virtually no neck shaping, so it should go quickly. The sleeves have the striped hem at the bottom and the same top pattern as the shoulders, so the non-fair isle parts should make good class and meeting knitting. Maybe this will be complete in a few weeks...

Other Projects Update

The only progress here worth noting is on my Rowan sweater. No picture today, but the sleeves are in and the seams are sewn. There are a few more ends to weave and I need to finish the neckline. The concensus this weekend was that an attached I-cord should set it off nicely. That should go quickly, as soon as I have a chance to sit down and do it! It would be easy to do during meetings, but it's not very subtle to have an entire sweater in your lap.

I haven't really been working on anything else. The hours available seem small. Maybe that's because I did rip out the foot of that sock again, so I'm knitting, but not producing anything.

Why yes, Nancy, that is a spinning wheel!

And it's Nancy's spinning wheel. I had to give back the Guild's wheel, but Nancy loaned me her spare. I haven't had a lot of time to spin, but I am taking spinning class (yay!). After missing the first week, Maggie (the instructor) caught me up on carding and drop spindle spinning. I brought home a Louet this week, but I haven't had time to card and spin. I have a math test on Wednesday and another cume on Saturday, so the week is fairly full. I guess that's not so different than all the other weeks...

The Socks are in the Mail!

And my socks are at my house!

They're from Pam, at Blue Moon Knitting, knit in KnitPicks Andean Silk, a blend of 55% Super Fine Alpaca, 23% Silk, 22% Merino Wool. Yum! Let me tell you, they feel wonderful! They're so soft... might be too nice to get felted in my clogs. They might be feel-lucious-while-I-lounge-around-the-house socks. Thanks, Pam!!

But Pam didn't stop there. Oh no. She also sent a package of cute knitting notecards, a Mary Englebreit tote, and a little bottle of lavendar Eucalan to spoil these yummy socks. Wow! Thank you so much! :)

My sock pal socks are in the mail today. Somehow it seemed complicated to find a couple postcards of where I live and get socks, cards, and an envelope all in the same place at the same time. But I managed, and now they're on their way.

Speaking of having everything in the same place at the same time, the bunny sweater has seen no progress because I keep forgetting to take the pattern with me when I take the yarn. Sometimes I'm not so bright.

But maybe that's because I spent all of last week learning the second semester of general chemistry so that I could take its final exam in one hour (students in the course would have 2.5 hours) for a cumulative exam for the chem program. We'll see whether I learned enough to pass. It was certainly an interesting challenge!

It meant that I did nothing else last week, and I even forgot about the first week of spinning class! The instructor called me and asked if I could still come, and I had to say no. If I pass the cume, it was the right decision. If I don't... maybe I shoulda gone to learn drop spindle. I'll go a little early this week and get caught up.

But now, back to work and back to classes -- Linear Algebra, and Clouds and Aerosols. The latter isn't taught well (grr), so knitting there is helping me maintain my sanity. I've just about finished the foot of a sock this week, but I seem to have made the leg too long and will have to rip back and take out a little of the leg so that I'll have enough yarn. It seems like kind of a shame, but since it's just occupying my hands during class so that I don't jump up and strangle the professor... it seems like a good deal.

(My mom and I like the show The Amazing Race. If you don't know it, a pair of people (or in the current version, a family of four) is is in a race against other teams in which they travel around the world and have to complete a host of tasks to make it to the next day. Each day there's a task that only one of them can do. The other one can cheer them on, but not assist. Can you imagine just having to sit there, worrying? What would we do? We'd bring something to knit. Who cares what it is -- just something to keep your hands busy. This could be our schtick on the show -- the thing that makes us quirky. And because you don't have a lot of luggage to be dragging around, we couldn't bring a real project. I think it would be a sock, and just one, that we would rip out when we'd finish, just so that there would always be something to knit. At the end of each section, the last team to arrive is sent home, unless it's one of three non-elimination rounds. But this year, the penalty for being the last team was that you had to give up all of your belongings excpet for your passport and what you're wearing. And here's the technical question (not that we'd ever be the last team!) -- if you're the non-elimated last team and the sock-in-progress is in your pocket, do you get to keep it?)

Another baby, another sweater!

One of the post docs in our group is from Riverside and was the logistics guy when we were there. His very lovely wife had their first baby about a week after the rest of us left Riverside. We've gotten pictures, and he's awfully cute. The family will be moving to Colorado in November, and that guy's gonna need a sweater for when he's big enough to go outside and play in the snow.

I'm almost to the top of the fair isle band. The main color is teal and there's a bunny face in the middle of the front of the sweater. There's another fair isle band at the shoulder. The sleeves have the striped band and then are plain until a little before they join the body. I cast on Thursday, I think, so I'm making good progress.

As far as I know, this will be a surprise. I'm looking forward to sending it off, maybe by the end of the month!

Time Flies when you forgot you didn't post...

How did a whole month go by? Apparently I only imagined posting about the trip back, knitting, and spinning, after I got home from California! I'm so sorry I never actually did it.

So let us check back to that list of things I wanted to do when I got home.

• sleeping in my own bed with the cat, with the window open and the down comforter on. -- CHECK. Made me very happy.
• watching a whole lotta West Wing and knitting with my mom. -- CHECK. Lots of fun, and now we're as caught up as we can be. In fact, we've just about run out of English language programming and she's going to start making me watch German murder mysteries soon.
• cooking something really good. -- CHECK. Lasagna, breaded lemon chicken thing, snickerdoodles, fajitas, strawberry rhubarb pie. We love you, America's Test Kitchen/Cooks Illustrated!
• $100 teaching award I won. -- CHECK. Put toward the price of spinning class.
• knitting with the girls on Saturdays. -- CHECK. I've only managed to make one meeting, plus spinning last Sunday. I missed everyone and it's good to be back.
• going to Andre's with my mom and grandparents. Goin' on Friday with my grandparents, so almost check.
• seeing my mountains instead of the Riverside hills and their haze. -- CHECK. I had the biggest smile on my face the first time I saw the Flatirons the day after I got home!

So that's been a pretty successful venture, I'd say. It's been very, very good to be home.

The drive home from California was exciting. About an hour out of Riverside the truck lost power and we pulled off the road in Barstow. Called the truck people and they had a repair guy to us in 10 minutes (!), and we discovered that a pipe that connects the engine to the turbo engine was broken, hence no power. Within four hours they'd brought us a new truck, we'd repacked everything into it, and we were on the road again.

The landscape in California and Utah is fascinating. My driving companion and I took a lot of pictures the first day and then discovered that the camera battery was dead for day 2, which was very disappointing. The California desert sections were interesting with scrubby trees I'd never seen before. Vegas was a sight, as were we, I'm sure, cruising a little bit of the strip in our 16' Penske truck. Neither of us had been to Vegas before (my companion was a Brit who wants to see as much of the US as possible), so it seemed like too good an oportunity to pass up. Despite our setbacks, we made it into Utah that night.

Day two was filled with amazing landscapes. Bluffs and canyons I can't begin to describe. I was so bummed about the camera battery. This is the place I really want to go now, maybe a week or two, driving around and looking at these incredible natural formations. Just how cool was it?

I wasn't driving, and I didn't knit. I just looked around at formations, colors, rock strata; deep, narrow, twisty canyons; and the wide, green, (irrigated) valleys between them. It was just fascinating. Southern Utah has 5 national parks (from W to E, Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, and Arches) and several national monuments which I'm sure are all exquisite and fascinating. I just need a week or two, a vehicle, and a couple more teaching awards to pay for the gas. A traveling companion with patience for my photography (perhaps with a lap-ful of knitting) would be a bonus.

In the knit and spin departments, there are a lot of updates, but I don't have pictures for all of them.

Looking at the list of WIPs, I finished the Goddess Shawl in June, probably. I should get a photo and then I'll write a long entry about the history of that project. I finished the Shapely Tank just before I went to California. Pictures are also in order and I'll try to work on that while it's still warm out. Most everything else on that list is still languishing, but I'm hoping to dig stuff out again soon.

In the mean time, I finally worked out my difficulties with the sockapal2za socks. Mom's finished hers, too.

(Left: My socks, "Summer Garden Socks" designed by my mom. Free pattern available from theknitter.com. Knit in Lorna's Laces Happy Valley (variegated) and Lang Jawoll (white). Right: Mom's socks, "Friday Harbor Socks" (with modifications) from Nancy Bush's Knitting on the Road. Knit in Sheldrige Farms Fingering Weight Ultra in hand-dyed variegated blues. Click either one for big.)

With the socks finished, a new project awaits! Ok, maybe old projects await! While I was in California I started the Polka Dot sweater (with the tubular cast on). The body is knit and the ~400 sts for the edging have been picked up. You know what's going to be worse tha tubular cast on? Tubular bind off. Kitchener stitch on those ~400 sts. This has not motivated me to knit the edging, but I try to make myself look at. Its kind of a shame, since it's so close to finished. Of course, after the edging I need to knit moss stitch ties (probably 24" by 6 or 8 sts, twice!) so there's a ways to go. Picture will come of this, too.

I do get a new project, though. A post doc in our group had a baby boy a week ago, so there's a sweater to be done for him -- swatched last night. I'm very excited about this since it's cute, small, and mostly stockinette in the round. Should be done in no time!

Beyond those things, I'm aiming to put the sleeves in the Rowan sampler sweater and finish that off, then try to work on Rogue and hopefully my red and black sweater. New projects are staring at me from the stash and the basket, too.

Yesterday was a sad day for spinning, as I had to return my borrowed spinning wheel. I put my name on the list to buy the same one (Lendrum double treadle) as soon as Shuttles has one in stock, but that's expected to be two months. Two months!! Thankfully, Nancy offered to loan me hers for a bit, so I might be saved. I'm looking forward to the spinning class and lots more spinning. In the meantime, I finished up the wool/silk blend from Lambspun and got about 400 yds (2-ply) from 4 oz. of roving. Its destiny? Unsure. Maybe a scarf or mittens. I think I'm leaning toward a scarf.

And finally, I started spinning some Cormo that I bought in Estes Park in June. It's well-prepared roving that just about spins itself. Sometimes I can do straight long-draw technique and not have to use my right hand at all, which has been a fun, new experience. The cormo is incredibly soft and feels springy on the bobbin. I bought half a pound of white and half a pound of grey. It spins up very fine and the few bits of vegetable matter usually fall out on their own. The booth where I bought it had many beautiful, two-tone scarves, and (at least for now!) that's my goal with this fiber.

I'll do my best to post more consistently now! School's started, classes are under control, research is taking a little break but will be back next week. Hopefully this semester I'll have exciting projects to photograph and motivation to post before the world thinks my advisor's chained me to the desk . :)